THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT 


THE 
WONDERFUL   VISIT 


BY 

H.  G.  WELLS 

AUTHOR  OP  "THE  WORLD  SET  FREE,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


COPYBIGHT,   1895, 

BT  MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 


p/e 

WS7 


TO   THE 

iiHtmorg  of  mg  ©ear  Jttenfc 
WALTER  LOW 


614GG5 


CONTENTS. 


PA9K 

THE  NIGHT  OP  THE  STRANGE  BIRD 1 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  STRANGE  BIRD    ....  4 

THE  HUNTING  OF  THE  STRANGE  BIRD   ....  8 

THE  VICAR  AND  THE  ANGEL 17 

PARENTHESIS  ON  ANGELS .34 

AT  THE  VICARAGE 37 

THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE 49 

THE  CURATE 69 

AFTER  DINNER 74 

MORNING 94 

THE  VIOLIN     - 97 

THE  ANGEL  EXPLORES  THE  VILLAGE        ....  102 

LADY  HAMMERGALLOW'S  VIEW         .....  123 

FURTHER  ADVENTURES  OF  THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  VILLAGE  131 

MRS.  JEHORAM'S  BREADTH  OF  VIEW        ....  144 

A  TRIVIAL  INCIDENT 150 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS. 


THE  WAHP  AND  THE  WOOF  OF  THINGS   ....  152 

THE  ANGEL'S  DEBUT         .......  166 

THE  TROUBLE  OF  THE  BARBED  WIRE      ....  183 

DELIA         ..........  192 

DOCTOR  CRUMP  ACTS         .......  196 

SIB  JOHN  GOTCH  ACTS       .......  205 

THE  SEA  CLIFF          ........  210 

MRS.  HINIJER  ACTS   ........  213 

THE  ANGEL  IN  TROUBLE  .......  217 

THE  LAST  DAT  OF  THE  VISIT  ......  224 

THE  EPILOGUE   .  243 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

THB  NIGHT  OF  THE  STBANGB  BIRD. 
I. 

N  the  Night  of  the  Strange  Bird,  many 
people  at  Sidderton  (and  some  nearer)  saw  a 
Glare  on  the  Sidderford  moor.  But  no  one  in 
Sidderford  saw  it,  for  most  of  Sidderford  was 
abed. 

All  day  the  wind  had  been  rising,  so  that 
the  larks  on  the  moor  chirruped  fitfully  near 
the  ground,  or  rose  only  to  be  driven  like 
leaves  before  the  wind.  The  sun  set  in  a 
bloody  welter  of  clouds,  and  the  moon  was 
hidden.  The  glare,  they  say,  was  golden  like 
a  beam  shining  out  of  the  sky,  not  a  uniform 
blaze,  but  broken  all  over  by  curving  flashes 
like  the  waving  of  swords.  It  lasted  but  a 
moment  and  left  the  night  dark  and  obscure. 

B  1 


2  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

There  were  letters  about  it  in  Nature,  and  a 
rough  drawing  that  no  one  thought  very  like. 
(You  may  see  it  for  yourself  —  the  drawing 
that  was  unlike  the  glare  —  on  page  42  of  Vol. 
cclx.  of  that  publication.) 

None  in  Sidderford  saw  the  light,  but  Annie, 
Hooker  Durgan's  wife,  was  lying  awake,  and 
she  saw  the  reflection  of  it  —  a  flickering  tongue 
of  gold  —  dancing  on  the  wall. 

She,  too,  was  one  of  those  who  heard  the 
sound.  The  others  who  heard  the  sound  were 
Lumpy  Durgan,  the  half-wit,  and  Amory's 
mother.  They  said  it  was  a  sound  like  chil- 
dren singing  and  a  throbbing  of  harp  strings, 
carried  on  a  rush  of  notes  like  that  which 
sometimes  comes  from  an  organ.  It  began  and 
ended  like  the  opening  and  shutting  of  a  door, 
and  before  and  after  they  heard  nothing  but  the 
night  wind  howling  over  the  moor  and  the 
noise  of  the  caves  under  Sidderford  cliff. 
Amory's  mother  said  she  wanted  to  cry  when 
she  heard  it,  but  Lumpy  was  only  sorry  he 
could  hear  no  more. 

That  is  as  much  as  anyone  can  tell  you  of 
the  glare  upon  Sidderford  Moor  and  the  alleged 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  3 

music  therewith.  And  whether  these  had  any 
real  connexion  with  the  Strange  Bird  whose 
history  follows,  is  more  than  I  can  say.  But  I 
set  it  down  here  for  reasons  that  will  be  more 
apparent  as  the  story  proceeds. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  STRANGE  BIRD. 
II. 

SANDY  BRIGHT  was  coming  down  the  road 
from  Spinner's  carrying  a  side  of  bacon  he  had 
taken  in  exchange  for  a  clock.  He  saw  nothing 
of  the  light  but  he  heard  and  saw  the  Strange 
Bird.  He  suddenly  heard  a  flapping  and  a 
voice  like  a  woman  wailing,  and  being  a  ner- 
vous man  and  all  alone,  he  was  alarmed  forth- 
with, and  turning  (all  a-tremble)  saw  something 
large  and  black  against  the  dim  darkness  of  the 
cedars  up  the  hill.  It  seemed  to  be  coming 
right  down  upon  him,  and  incontinently  he 
dropped  his  bacon  and  set  off  running,  only  to 
fall  headlong. 

He  tried  in  vain  —  such  was  his  state  of 
mind  —  to  remember  the  beginning  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer.  The  Strange  Bird  flapped  over  him, 
something  larger  than  himself,  with  a  vast 
spread  of  wings,  and,  as  he  thought,  black. 

4 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  5 

He  screamed  and  gave  himself  up  for  lost. 
Then  it  went  past  him,  sailing  down  the  hill, 
and,  soaring  over  the  vicarage,  vanished  into 
the  hazy  valley  towards  Sidderford. 

And  Sandy  Bright  lay  upon  his  stomach 
there,  for  ever  so  long,  staring  into  the  dark- 
ness after  the  Strange  Bird.  At  last  he  got 
upon  his  knees  and  began  to  thank  Heaven  for 
his  merciful  deliverance,  with  his  eyes  down- 
hill. He  went  on  down  into  the  village,  talk- 
ing aloud  and  confessing  his  sins  as  he  went, 
lest  the  Strange  Bird  should  come  back.  All 
who  heard  him  thought  him  drunk.  But  from 
that  night  he  was  a  changed  man,  and  had  done 
with  drunkenness  and  defrauding  the  revenue 
by  selling  silver  ornaments  without  a  licence. 
And  the  side  of  bacon  lay  upon  the  hillside 
until  the  tallyman  from  Portburdock  found  it 
in  the  morning. 

The  next  who  saw  the  Strange  Bird  was  a 
solicitor's  clerk  at  Iping  Hanger,  who  was 
climbing  the  hill  before  breakfast,  to  see  the 
sunrise.  Save  for  a  few  dissolving  wisps  of 
cloud  the  sky  had  been  blown  clear  in  the 
night.  At  first  he  thought  it  was  an  eagle  he 


6  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

saw.  It  was  near  the  zenith,  and  incredibly 
remote,  a  mere  bright  speck  above  the  pink 
cirri,  and  it  seemed  as  if  it  fluttered  and  beat 
itself  against  the  sky,  as  an  imprisoned  swallow 
might  do  against  a  window  pane.  Then  down 
it  came  into  the  shadow  of  the  earth,  sweeping 
in  a  great  curve  towards  Portburdock  and  rounc( 
over  the  Hanger,  and  so  vanishing  behind  the 
woods  of  Siddermorton  Park.  It  seemed  larger  than 
a  man.  Just  before  it  was  hidden,  the  light  of  the. 
rising  sun  smote  over  the  edge  of  the  downs  and 
touched  its  wings,  and  they  flashed  with  the  bright- 
ness of  flames  and  the  colour  of  precious  stones, 
and  so  passed,  leaving  the  witness  agape. 

A  ploughman  going  to  his  work,  along  under 
the  stone  wall  of  Siddermorton  Park,  saw  the 
Strange  Bird  flash  over  him  for  a  moment  and 
vanish  among  the  hazy  interstices  of  the  beech 
trees.  But  he  saw  little  of  the  colour  of  the 
wings,  witnessing  only  that  its  legs,  which 
were  long,  seemed  pink  and  bare  like  naked 
flesh,  and  its  body  mottled  white.  It  smote 
like  an  arrow  through  the  air  and  was  gone. 

These  were  the  first  three  eye-witnesses  of 
the  Strange  Bird. 


THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT.  7 

Now  in  these  days  one  does  not  cower  before 
the  devil  and  one's  own  sinfulness,  or  see 
strange  iridescent  wings  in  the  light  of  dawn, 
and  say  nothing  of  it  afterwards.  The  young 
solicitor's  clerk  told  his  mother  and  sisters  at 
breakfast,  and,  afterwards,  on  his  way  to  the 
office  at  Portburdock,  spoke  of  it  to  the  black- 
smith of  Hammerpond,  and  spent  the  morning 
with  his  fellow  clerks  marvelling  instead  of 
copying  deeds.  And  Sandy  Bright  went  to 
talk  the  matter  over  with  Mr.  Jekyll,  the 
*'  Primitive "  minister,  and  the  ploughman  told 
old  Hugh  and  afterwards  the  Vicar  of  Sidder- 
morton. 

"They  are  not  an  imaginative  race  about 
here,"  said  the  Vicar  of  Siddermorton,  "I  won- 
der how  much  of  that  was  true.  Barring  that 
he  thinks  the  wings  were  brown  it  sounds 
uncommonly  like  a  Flamingo." 


THE  HUNTING  OF  THE  STRANGE  BIRD. 
III. 

THE  Vicar  of  Siddermorton  (which  is  nine 
miles  inland  from  Siddermouth  as  the  crow 
flies)  was  an  ornithologist.  Some  such  pursuit, 
botany,  antiquity,  folk-lore,  is  almost  inevitable 
for  a  single  man  in  his  position.  He  was  given 
to  geometry  also,  propounding  occasionally  im- 
possible problems  in  the  Educational  Times,  but 
ornithology  was  his  forte.  He  had  already 
added  two  visitors  to  the  list  of  occasional 
British  birds.  His  name  was  well-known  in 
the  columns  of  the  Zoologist  (I  am  afraid  it 
may  be  forgotten  by  now,  for  the  world  moves 
apace).  And  on  the  day  after  the  coming  of 
the  Strange  Bird,  came  first  one  and  then  another 
to  confirm  the  ploughman's  story  and  tell  him, 
not  that  it  had  any  connexion,  of  the  Glare 
upon  Sidderford  moor. 

Now,  the  Vicar  of  Siddermorton  had  two 
8 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  £ 

rivals  in  his  scientific  pursuits;  Gully  of  Sid- 
derton,  who  had  actually  seen  the  Glare,  and  who 
it  was  sent  the  drawing  to  Nature,  and  Borland 
the  natural  history  dealer,  who  kept  the  marine 
laboratory  at  Portburdock.  Borland,  the  Vicar 
thought,  should  have  stuck  to  his  copepods,  but 
instead  he  kept  a  taxidermist,  and  took  advan- 
tage of  his  littoral  position  to  pick  up  rare  sea 
birds.  It  was  evident  to  anyone  who  knew  any- 
thing of  collecting  that  both  these  men  would  be 
scouring  the  country  after  the  strange  visitant, 
before  twenty-four  hours  were  out. 

The  Vicar's  eye  rested  on  the  back  of  Saun- 
ders'  British  Birds,  for  he  was  in  his  study  at 
the  time.  Already  in  two  places  there  was 
entered :  "  the  only  known  British  specimen  was 
secured  by  the  Rev.  K.  Hilyer,  Vicar  of  Sidder- 
morton."  A  third  such  entry.  He  doubted  if 
any  other  collector  had  that. 

He  looked  at  his  watch  —  two.  He  had  just 
lunched,  and  usually  he  "  rested "  in  the  after- 
noon. He  knew  it  would  make  him  feel  very 
disagreeable  if  he  went  out  into  the  hot  sun- 
shine—  bofch  on  the  top  of  his  head  and  gen- 
erally. Yet  Gully  perhaps  was  out,  prowling 


10  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

observant.  Suppose  it  was  something  very  good 
.and  Gully  got  it! 

His  gun  stood  in  the  corner.  (The  thing  had 
iridescent  wings  and  pink  legs!  The  chromatic 
conflict  was  certainly  exceedingly  stimulating.) 
He  took  his  gun. 

He  would  have  gone  out  by  the  glass  doors 
and  verandah,  and  down  the  garden  into  the  hill 
road,  in  order  to  avoid  his  housekeeper's  eye. 
He  knew  his  gun  expeditions  were  not  approved 
of.  But  advancing  towards  him  up  the  garden, 
he  saw  the  curate's  wife  and  her  two  daughters, 
carrying  tennis  rackets.  His  curate's  wife  was 
a  young  woman  of  immense  will,  who  used  to 
play  tennis  on  his  lawn,  and  cut  his  roses,  differ 
from  him  on  doctrinal  points,  and  criticise  his 
personal  behaviour  all  over  the  parish.  He 
went  in  abject  fear  of  her,  was  always  trying  to 
propitiate  her.  But  so  far  he  had  clung  to  his 
ornithology.  .  .  . 

However,  he  went  out  by  the  front  door. 


THE  HUNTING  OF  THE   STRANGE  BIRD  —  con- 
tinued. 

IV. 

IF  it  were  not  for  collectors  England  would  be 
full,  so  to  speak,  of  rare  birds  and  wonderful 
butterflies,  strange  flowers  and  a  thousand  inter- 
esting things.  But  happily  the  collector  pre- 
vents all  that,  either  killing  with  his  own  hands 
or,  by  buying  extravagantly,  procuring  people 
of  the  lower  classes  to  kill  such  eccentricities 
as  appear.  It  makes  work  for  people,  even 
though  Acts  of  Parliament  interfere.  In  this 
way,  for  instance,  he  is  killing  off  the  chough 
in  Cornwall,  the  Bath  white  butterfly,  the  Queen 
of  Spain  Fritillary;  and  can  plume  himself  upon 
the  extermination  of  the  Great  Auk,  and  a  hun- 
dred other  rare  birds  and  plants  and  insects. 
All  that  is  the  work  of  the  collector  and  his 
glory  alone.  In  the  name  of  Science.  And 
this  is  right  and  as  it  should  be;  eccentricity, 
in  fact,  is  immorality  —  think  over  it  again  if 

11 


12  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

you  do  not  think  so  now  —  just  as  eccentricity 
in  one's  way  of  thinking  is  madness  (I  defy  you 
to  find  another  definition  that  will  fit  all  the 
cases  of  either);  and  if  a  species  is  rare  it  fol- 
lows that  it  is  not  Fitted  to  Survive.  The 
collector  is  after  all  merely  like  the  foot  soldier 
in  the  days  of  heavy  armour  —  he  leaves  the 
combatants  alone  and  cuts  the  throats  of  those 
who  are  overthrown.  So  one  may  go  through 
England  from  end  to  end  in  the  summer  time 
and  see  only  eight  or  ten  commonplace  wild 
flowers,  and  the  commoner  butterflies,  and  a 
dozen  or  so  common  birds,  and  never  be  offended 
by  any  breach  of  the  monotony,  any  splash  of 
strange  blossom  or  flutter  of  unknown  wing. 
All  the  rest  have  been  "collected"  years  ago. 
For  which  cause  we  should  all  love  collectors, 
and  bear  in  mind  what  we  owe  them  when  their 
little  collections  are  displayed.  These  camphor- 
ated little  drawers  of  theirs,  their  glass  cases  and 
blotting-paper  books,  are  the  graves  of  the  Rare  and 
the  Beautiful,  the  symbols  of  the  Triumph  of  Lei- 
sure (morally  spent)  over  the  Delights  of  Life. 
(All  of  which,  as  you  very  properly  remark,  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  Strange  Bird.) 


THE  HUNTING  OP  THE   STRANGE  BIRD  —  con- 
tinued. 

V. 

THERE  is  a  place  on  the  moor  where  the  black 
water  shines  among  the  succulent  moss,  and  the 
hairy  sundew,  eater  of  careless  insects,  spreads 
its  red-stained  hungry  hands  to  the  God  who 
gives  his  creatures  —  one  to  feed  another.  On 
a  ridge  thereby  grow  birches  with  a  silvery  bark, 
and  the  soft  green  of  the  larch  mingles  with 
the  dark  green  fir.  Thither  through  the  honey 
humming  heather  came  the  Vicar,  in  the  heat 
of  the  day,  carrying  a  gun  under  his  arm,  a 
gun  loaded  with  swanshot  for  the  Strange  Bird. 
And  over  his*  disengaged  hand  he  carried  a 
pocket  handkerchief  wherewith,  ever  and  again, 
he  wiped  his  beady  face. 

He  went  by  and  on  past  the  big  pond  and  the 
pool  full  of  brown  leaves  where  the  Sidder 
arises,  and  so  by  the  road  (which  is  at  first 

13 


14  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

sandy  and  then  chalky)  to  the  little  gate  that 
goes  into  the  park.  There  are  seven  steps  up 
to  the  gate  and  on  the  further  side  six  down 
again  —  lest  the  deer  escape  —  so  that  when  the 
Vicar  stood  in  the  gateway  his  head  was  ten 
feet  or  more  above  the  ground.  And  looking 
where  a  tumult  of  bracken  fronds  filled  the  hol- 
low between  two  groups  of  beech,  his  eye  caught 
something  parti -coloured  that  wavered  and  went. 
Suddenly  his  face  gleamed  and  his  muscles  grew 
tense;  he  ducked  his  head,  clutched  his  gun 
with  both  hands,  and  stood  still.  Then  watching 
keenly,  he  came  on  down  the  steps  into  the  park, 
and  still  holding  his  gun  with  both  hands,  crept 
rather  than  walked  towards  the  jungle  of  bracken. 
Nothing  stirred,  and  he  almost  feared  that  his 
eyes  had  played  him  false,  until  he  reached  the 
ferns  and  had  gone  rustling  breast  high  into 
them.  Then  suddenly  rose  something  full  of 
wavering  colours,  twenty  yards  or  less  in  front 
of  his  face,  and  beating  the  air.  In  another 
moment  it  had  fluttered  above  the  bracken  and 
spread  its  pinions  wide.  He  saw  what  it  was, 
his  heart  was  in  his  mouth,  and  he  fired  out  of 
pure  surprise  and  habit. 


THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT.  15 

There  was  a  scream  of  superhuman  agony,  the 
wings  beat  the  air  twice,  and  the  victim  came 
slanting  swiftly  downward  and  struck  the  ground 
—  a  struggling  heap  of  writhing  body,  broken 
wing  and  flying  bloodstained  plumes  —  upon  the 
turfy  slope  behind. 

The  Vicar  stood  aghast,  with  his  smoking 
gun  in  his  hand.  It  was  no  bird  at  all,  but  a 
youth  with  an  extremely  beautiful  face,  clad  in 
a  robe  of  saffron  and  with  iridescent  wings, 
across  whose  pinions  great  waves  of  colour, 
flushes  of  purple  and  crimson,  golden  green  and 
intense  blue,  pursued  one  another  as  he  writhed 
in  his  agony.  Never  had  the  Vicar  seen  such 
gorgeous  floods  of  colour,  not  stained  glass  win- 
dows, not  the  wings  of  butterflies,  not  even  the 
glories  of  crystals  seen  between  prisms,  no  col- 
ours on  earth  could  compare  with  them.  Twice 
the  Angel  raised  himself,  only  to  fall  over  side- 
ways again.  Then  the  beating  of  the  wings 
diminished,  the  terrified  face  grew  pale,  the 
floods  of  colour  abated,  and  suddenly  with  a  sob 
he  lay  prone,  and  the  changing  hues  of  the 
broken  wings  faded  swiftly  into  one  uniform 
dull  grey  hue. 


16  THB  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Oh!  what  has  happened  to  me?"  cried  the 
Angel  (for  such  it  was),  shuddering  violently, 
hands  outstretched  and  clutching  the  ground, 
and  then  lying  still. 

"  Dear  me ! "  said  the  Vicar.  "  I  had  no 
idea."  He  came  forward  cautiously.  "Excuse 
me,"  he  said,  "I  am  afraid  I  have  shot  you.'* 
It  was  the  obvious  remark. 

The  Angel  seemed  to  become  aware  of  his 
presence  for  the  first  time.  He  raised  himself 
by  one  hand,  his  brown  eyes  stared  into  the 
Vicar's.  Then,  with  a  gasp,  and  biting  his 
nether  lip,  he  struggled  into  a  sitting  position 
and  surveyed  the  Vicar  from  top  to  toe. 

"  A  man ! "  said  the  Angel,  clasping  his  fore- 
head ;  "  a  man  in  the  maddest  black  clothes  and 
without  a  feather  upon  him.  Then  I  was  not 
deceived.  I  am  indeed  in  the  Land  of  Dreams !  " 


THE  VlCAK   AND  THE   ANGEL. 

VI. 

Now  there  are  some  things  frankly  impossible. 
The  weakest  intellect  will  admit  this  situation 
is  impossible.  The  Athenaeum  will  probably  say 
as  much  should  it  venture  to  review  this.  Sun- 
bespattered  ferns,  spreading  beech  trees,  the 
Vicar  and  the  gun  are  acceptable  enough.  But 
this  Angel  is  a  different  matter.  Plain  sensible 
people  will  scarcely  go  on  with  such  an  extrava- 
gant book.  And  the  Vicar  fully  appreciated 
this  impossibility.  But  he  lacked  decision. 
Consequently  he  went  on  with  it,  as  you  shall 
immediately  hear.  He  was  hot,  it  was  after 
dinner,  he  was  in  no  mood  for  mental  subtle- 
ties. The  Angel  had  him  at  a  disadvantage, 
and  further  distracted  him  from  the  main  issue 
by  irrelevant  iridescence  and  a  violent  fluttering. 
For  the  moment  it  never  occurred  to  the  Vicar 

to  ask  whether  the  Angel  was  possible  or  not. 
c  17 


18  THE  WONDEBFTJL  VISIT. 

He  accepted  him  in  the  confusion  of  the  moment, 
and  the  mischief  was  done.  Put  yourself  in 
his  place,  my  dear  Athenceum.  You  go  out 
shooting.  You  hit  something.  That  alone 
would  disconcert  you.  You  find  you  have  hit 
an  Angel,  and  he  writhes  about  for  a  minute  and 
then  sits  up  and  addresses  you.  He  makes  no 
apology  for  his  own  impossibility.  Indeed,  he 
carries  the  charge  clean  into  your  camp.  "A 
man!"  he  says,  pointing.  "A  man  in  the  mad- 
dest black  clothes  and  without  a  feather  upon 
him.  Then  I  was  not  deceived.  I  am  indeed 
in  the  Land  of  Dreams ! "  You  must  answer 
him.  Unless  you  take  to  your  heels.  Or  blow 
his  brains  out  with  your  second  barrel  as  an 
escape  from  the  controversy. 

"  The  Land  of  Dreams !  Pardon  me  if  I  sug- 
gest you  have  just  come  out  of  it,"  was  the 
Vicar's  remark. 

"How  can  that  be?"  said  the  Angel. 

"Your  wing,"  said  the  Vicar,  "is  bleeding. 
Before  we  talk,  may  I  have  the  pleasure  —  the 
melancholy  pleasure  —  of  tying  it  up  ?  I  am 
really  most  sincerely  sorry  ..."  The  Angel 
put  his  hand  behind  his  back  and  winced. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  19 

The  Vicar  assisted  his  victim  to  stand  up. 
The  Angel  turned  gravely  and  the  Vicar,  with 
numberless  insignificant  panting  parentheses, 
carefully  examined  the  injured  wings.  (They 
articulated,  he  observed  with  interest,  to  a 
kind  of  second  glenoid  on  the  outer  and  upper 
edge  of  the  shoulder  blade.  The  left  wing  had 
suffered  little  except  the  loss  of  some  of  the 
primary  wing-quills,  and  a  shot  or  so  in  the 
ala  spuria,  but  the  humerus  bone  of  the  right 
was  evidently  smashed.)  The  Vicar  stanched 
the  bleeding  as  well  as  he  could  and  tied  up 
the  bone  with  his  pocket  handkerchief  and  the 
neck  wrap  his  housekeeper  made  him  carry  in 
all  weathers. 

"I'm  afraid  you  will  not  be  able  to  fly  for 
some  time,"  said  he,  feeling  the  bone. 

"I  don't  like  this  new  sensation,"  said  the 
Angel. 

"The  Pain  when  I  feel  your  bone?" 

"The  what?"   said  the  Angel. 

"The  Pain." 

"'Pain' — you  call  it.  No,  I  certainly  don't 
like  the  Pain.  Do  you  have  much  of  this  Pain 
in  the  Land  of  Dreams  ?  " 


20  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"A  very  fair  share,"  said  the  Vicar.  "Is  it 
new  to  you  ?  " 

"Quite,"  said  the  Angel.     "I  don't  like  it." 

"  How  curious ! "  said  the  Vicar,  and  bit  at 
the  end  of  a  strip  of  linen  to  tie  a  knot.  "I 
think  this  bandaging  must  serve  for  the  pres- 
ent," he  said.  "I've  studied  ambulance  work 
before,  but  never  the  bandaging  up  of  wing 
wounds.  Is  your  Pain  any  better?" 

"It  glows  now  instead  of  flashing,"  said  the 
Angel. 

"I  am  afraid  you  will  find  it  glow  for  some 
time,"  said  the  Vicar,  still  intent  on  the  wound. 

The  Angel  gave  a  shrug  of  the  wing  and 
turned  round  to  look  at  the  Vicar  again.  He 
had  been  trying  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  Vicar 
over  his  shoulder  during  all  their  interview. 
He  looked  at  him  from  top  to  toe  with  raised 
eyebrows  and  a  growing  smile  on  his  beautiful 
soft-featured  face.  "It  seems  so  odd,"  he  said 
with  a  sweet  little  laugh,  "to  be  talking  to  a 
Man!" 

"Do  you  know,"  said  the  Vicar,  "now  that  I 
come  to  think  of  it,  it  is  equally  odd  to  me  that 
I  should  be  talking  to  an  Angel.  I  am  a  some- 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  21 

what  matter-of-fact  person.     A  Vicar  has  to  be. 
Angels    I    have    always    regarded    as  —  artistic 

conceptions " 

"Exactly  what  we  think  of  men." 

"  But  surely  you  have  seen  so  many  men " 

"  Never  before  to-day.  In  pictures  and  books, 
times  enough  of  course.  But  I  have  seen  sev- 
eral since  the  sunrise,  solid  real  men,  besides  a 
horse  or  so  —  those  Unicorn  things  you  know, 
without  horns  —  and  quite  a  number  of  those 
grotesque  knobby  things  called  'cows.'  I  was 
naturally  a  little  frightened  at  so  many  mythical 
monsters,  and  came  to  hide  here  until  it  was 
dark.  I  suppose  it  will  be  dark  again  presently 
like  it  was  at  first.  Phew!  This  Pain  of 
yours  is  poor  fun.  I  hope  I  shall  wake  up 
directly." 

"I  don't  understand  quite,"  said  the  Vicar, 
knitting  his  brows  and  tapping  his  forehead  with 
his  flat  hand.  "  Mythical  monster !  "  The  worst 
thing  he  had  been  called  for  years  hitherto  was 
a  'mediseval  anachronism '  (by  an  advocate  of 
Disestablishment).  "Do  I  understand  that  you 
consider  me  as — as  something  in  a  dream?" 
"Of  course,"  said  the  Angel  smiling. 


22  THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"And  this  world  about  me,  these  rugged  trees 
and  spreading  fronds " 

"Is  all  so  very  dream-like,"  said  the  Angel. 
"Just  exactly  what  one  dreams  of  —  or  artists 
imagine." 

"You  have  artists  then  among  the  Angels?" 

"All  kinds  of  artists,  Angels  with  wonderful 
imaginations,  who  invent  men  and  cows  and 
eagles  and  a  thousand  impossible  creatures." 

"  Impossible  creatures !  "   said  the  Vicar. 

"Impossible  creatures,"  said  the  Angel. 
"Myths." 

"But  I'm  real!"  said  the  Vicar.  "I  assure 
you  I'm  real." 

The  Angel  shrugged  his  wings  and  winced 
and  smiled.  "I  can  always  tell  when  I  am 
dreaming,"  he  said. 

"  You  —  dreaming, "  said  the  Vicar.  He  looked 
round  him. 

"  You  dreaming!"  he  repeated.  His  mind 
worked  diffusely. 

He  held  out  his  hand  with  all  his  fingers 
moving.  "I  have  it!"  he  said.  "I  begin  to 
see."  A  really  brilliant  idea  was  dawning  upon 
his  mind.  He  had  not  studied  mathematics  at 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  23 

Cambridge  for  nothing,  after  all.  "Tell  me, 
please.  Some  animals  of  your  world  ...  of 
the  Real  World,  real  animals  you  know." 

"  Real  animals ! "  said  the  Angel  smiling. 
"  Why  —  there's  Griffins  and  Dragons  —  and  Jab- 
berwocks  —  and  Cherubim  —  and  Sphinxes  —  and 
the  Hippogriff —  and  Mermaids  —  and  Satyrs  — 
and  .  .  ." 

"Thank  you,'*  said  the  Vicar  as  the  Angel 
appeared  to  be  warming  to  his  work;  "thank  you. 
That  is  quite  enough.  I  begin  to  understand." 

He  paused  for  a  moment,  his  face  pursed  up. 
"Yes  ...  I  begin  to  see  it." 

"See  what?"   asked  the  Angel. 

"The  Griffins  and  Satyrs  and  so  forth.  It's 
as  clear  ..." 

"I  don't  see  them,"    said  the  Angel. 

"No,  the  whole  point  is  they  are  not  to  be 
seen  in  this  world.  But  our  men  with  imagi- 
nations have  told  us  all  about  them,  you  know. 
And  even  I  at  times  .  .  .  there  are  places  in 
this  village  where  you  must  simply  take  what 
they  set  before  you,  or  give  offence  —  I,  I 
say,  have  seen  in  my  dreams  Jabberwocks, 
Bogle  brutes,  Mandrakes  .  .  .  From  our  point 


24  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

of    view,    you    know,    they    are   Dream    Creat- 
ures ..." 

"  Dream  Creatures !  "  said  the  Angel.  "  How 
singular!  This  is  a  very  curious  dream.  A 
kind  of  topsy-turvy  one.  You  call  men  real 
and  angels  a  myth.  It  almost  makes  one  think 
that  in  some  odd  way  there  must  be  two  worlds 
as  it  were  .  .  ." 

"At  least  Two,"  said  the  Vicar. 
"Lying    somewhere    close    together,    and    yet 
scarcely  suspecting  .  .  ." 

"As  near  as  page  to  page  of  a  book." 
"Penetrating  each  other,  living  each  its  own 
life.     This  is  really  a  delicious  dream!" 
"And  never  dreaming  of  each  other." 
"Except  when  people  go  a-dreaming!" 
"Yes,"    said    the    Angel    thoughtfully.      "It 
must    be    something    of    the    sort.      And    that 
reminds    me.      Sometimes    when    I    have    been 
dropping  asleep,   or  drowsing  under  the   noon- 
tide sun,  I  have  seen  strange  corrugated    faces 
just  like   yours,   going   by  me,   and  trees   with 
green  leaves  upon  them,  and  such  queer  uneven 
ground  as   this  ...     It  must  be  so.     I  have 
fallen  into  another  world." 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  25 

"Sometimes,"  began  the  Vicar,  "at  bedtime, 
when  I  have  been  just  on  the  edge  of  conscious- 
ness, I  have  seen  faces  as  beautiful  as  yours,  and 
the  strange  dazzling  vistas  of  a  wonderful  scene, 
that  flowed  past  me,  winged  shapes  soaring  over 
it,  and  wonderful  —  sometimes  terrible  —  forms 
going  to  and  fro.  I  have  even  heard  sweet 
music  too  in  my  ears  ...  It  may  be  that  as 
we  withdraw  our  attention  from  the  world  of 
sense,  the  pressing  world  about  us,  as  we  pass 
into  the  twilight  of  repose,  other  worlds  .  .  . 
Just  as  we  see  the  stars,  those  other  worlds  in 
space,  when  the  glare  of  day  recedes  .  .  . 
And  the  artistic  dreamers  who  see  such  things 
most  clearly  ..." 

They  looked  at  one  another. 

"And  in  some  incomprehensible  manner  I 
have  fallen  into  this  world  of  yours  out  of  my 
own ! "  said  the  Angel,  "  into  the  world  of  my 
dreams,  grown  real." 

He  looked  about  him.  "Into  the  world  of 
my  dreams." 

"It  is  confusing,"  said  the  Vicar.  "It  almost 
makes  one  think  there  may  be  (ahem)  Four  Di- 
mensions after  all.  In  which  case,  of  course, 'f 


26  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

he  went  on  hurriedly  —  for  he  loved  geometrical 
speculations  and  took  a  certain  pride  in  his 
knowledge  of  them  —  "there  may  be  any  number 
of  three  dimensional  universes  packed  side  by 
side,  and  all  dimly  dreaming  of  one  another. 
There  may  be  world  upon  world,  universe  upon 
universe.  It's  perfectly  possible.  There's  noth- 
ing so  incredible  as  the  absolutely  possible.  But 
I  wonder  how  you  came  to  fall  out  of  your  world 
into  mine.  ..." 

"Dear  me!"  said  the  Angel;  "there's  deer 
and  a  stag!  Just  as  they  draw  them  on  the 
coats  of  arms.  How  grotesque  it  all  seems! 
Can  I  really  be  awake?" 

He  rubbed  his  knuckles  into  his  eyes. 

The  half-dozen  of  dappled  deer  came  in  Indian 
file  obliquely  through  the  trees  and  halted, 
watching.  "It's  no  dream  —  I  am  really  a  solid 
concrete  Angel,  in  Dream  Land,"  said  the 
Angel.  He  laughed.  The  Vicar  stood  survey- 
ing him.  The  Reverend  gentleman  was  pull- 
ing his  mouth  askew  after  a  habit  he  had,  and 
slowly  stroking  his  chin.  He  was  asking  him- 
self whether  he  too  was  not  in  the  Land  of 
Dreams. 


THE  VICAR  AND  THE  ANGEL  —  continued. 
VII. 

Now  in  the  land  of  the  Angels,  so  the  Vicar 
learnt  in  the  course  of  many  conversations,  there 
is  neither  pain  nor  trouble  nor  death,  marrying 
nor  giving  in  marriage,  birth  nor  forgetting. 
Only  at  times  new  things  begin.  It  is  a  land 
without  hill  or  dale,  a  wonderfully  level  land, 
glittering  with  strange  buildings,  with  incessant 
sunlight  or  full  moon,  and  with  incessant  breezes 
blowing  through  the  JEolian  traceries  of  the 
trees.  It  is  Wonderland,  with  glittering  seas 
hanging  in  the  sky,  across  which  strange  fleets 
go  sailing,  none  know  whither.  There  the 
flowers  glow  in  Heaven  and  the  stars  shine  about 
one's  feet  and  the  breath  of  life  is  a  delight. 
The  land  goes  on  for  ever  —  there  is  no  solar 
system  nor  interstellar  space  such  as  there  is  in 
our  universe  —  and  the  air  goes  upward  past  the 
sun  into  the  uttermost  abyss  of  their  sky.  And 

27 


28  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

there  is  nothing  but  Beauty  there  —  all  the 
beauty  in  our  art  is  but  feeble  rendering  of  faint 
glimpses  of  that  wonderful  world,  and  our  com- 
posers, our  original  composers,  are  those  who 
hear,  however  faintly,  the  dust  of  melody  that 
drives  before  its  winds.  And  the  Angels,  and 
wonderful  monsters  of  bronze  and  marble  and 
living  fire,  go  to  and  fro  therein. 

It  is  a  land  of  Law  —  for  whatever  is,  is  under 
the  law  —  but  its  laws  all,  in  some  strange  way, 
differ  from  ours.  Their  geometry  is  different 
because  their  space  has  a  curve  in  it  so  that  all 
their  planes  are  cylinders;  and  their  law  of 
Gravitation  is  not  according  to  the  law  of  in- 
verse squares,  and  there  are  four-and-twenty 
primary  colours  instead  of  only  three.  Most  of 
the  fantastic  things  of  our  science  are  common- 
places there,  and  all  our  earthly  science  would 
seem  to  them  the  maddest  dreaming.  There  are 
no  flowers  upon  their  plants,  for  instance,  but 
jets  of  coloured  fire.  That,  of  course,  would 
seem  mere  nonsense  to  you  because  you  do  not 
understand.  Most  of  what  the  Angel  told  the 
Vicar,  indeed,  the  Vicar  could  not  realise,  be- 
cause his  own  experiences,  being  only  of  this 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  29 

world  of  matter,  warred  against  his  understand- 
ing.    It  was  too  strange  to  imagine. 

What  had  jolted  these  twin  universes  together 
so  that  the  Angel  had  fallen  suddenly  into 
Sidderford,  neither  the  Angel  nor  the  Vicar  could 
tell.  Nor  for  the  matter  of  that  could  the  author 
of  this  story.  The  author  is  concerned  with 
the  facts  of  the  case,  and  has  neither  the  desire 
nor  the  confidence  to  explain  them.  Explana- 
tions are  the  fallacy  of  a  scientific  age.  And 
the  cardinal  fact  of  the  case  is  this,  that  out  in 
Siddermorton  Park,  with  the  glory  of  some  won- 
derful world  where  there  is  neither  sorrow  nor 
sighing,  still  clinging  to  him,  on  the  4th  of 
August,  1895,  stood  an  Angel,  bright  and  beau- 
tiful, talking  to  the  Vicar  of  Siddermorton  about 
the  plurality  of  worlds.  The  author  will  swear 
to  the  Angel,  if  need  be;  and  there  he  draws 
the  line. 


THE  VICAR  AND  THE  ANGEL  —  continued. 
VIII. 

"I  HAVE/'  said  the  Angel,  "a  most  unusual 
feeling  —  here.  Have  had  since  sunrise.  I 
don't  remember  ever  having  any  feeling  —  here 
before." 

"Not  pain,  I  hope,"  said  the  Vicar. 

"Oh  no!  It  is  quite  different  from  that  —  a 
kind  of  vacuous  feeling." 

"The  atmospheric  pressure,  perhaps,  is  a  little 
different,"  the  Vicar  began,  feeling  his  chin. 

"And  do  you  know,  I  have  also  the  most 
curious  sensations  in  my  mouth  —  almost  as  if 
—  it's  so  absurd !  —  as  if  I  wanted  to  stuff  things 
into  it." 

"Bless  me!"  said  the  Vicar.  "Of  course! 
You're  hungry!" 

"  Hungry !  "  said  the  Angel.     "  What's  that  ?  " 

"Don't  you  eat?" 

"Eat!     The  word's  quite  new  to  me." 
30 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  31 

"Put  food  into  your  mouth,  you  know.  One 
has  to  here.  You  will  soon  learn.  If  you 
don't,  you  get  thin  and  miserable,  and  suffer  a 
great  deal — pain,  you  know — and  finally  you  die. " 

"Die!"  said  the  Angel.  "That's  another 
strange  word ! " 

"It's  not  strange  here.  It  means  leaving  off, 
you  know,"  said  the  Vicar. 

"We  never  leave  off,"  said  the  Angel. 

"You  don't  know  what  may  happen  to  you 
in  this  world,"  said  the  Vicar,  thinking  him 
over.  "Possibly  if  you  are  feeling  hungry,  and 
can  feel  pain  and  have  your  wings  broken,  you 
may  even  have  to  die  before  you  get  out  of  it 
again.  At  any  rate  you  had  better  try  eating. 
For  my  own  part  —  ahem !  —  there  are  many 
more  disagreeable  things." 

"I  suppose  I  had  better  Eat,"  said  the  Angel. 
"If  it's  not  too  difficult.  I  don't  like  this 
'Pain'  of  yours,  and  I  don't  like  this  'Hungry.' 
If  your  'Die '  is  anything  like  it,  I  would  prefer 
to  Eat.  What  a  very  odd  world  this  is ! " 

"To  Die,"  said  the  Vicar,  "is  generally  con- 
sidered worse  than  either  pain  or  hunger.  .  .  , 
It  depends." 


S2  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"You  must  explain  all  that  to  me  later,"  said 
the  Angel.  "Unless  I  wake  up.  At  present, 
please  show  me  how  to  eat.  If  you  will.  I  feel 
a  kind  of  urgency.  ..." 

"Pardon  me,"  said  the  Vicar,  and  offered  an 
elbow.  "If  I  may  have  the  pleasure  of  enter- 
taining you.  My  house  lies  yonder  —  not  a 
couple  of  miles  from  here." 

"  Your  House ! "  said  the  Angel  a  little  puz- 
zled; but  he  took  the  Vicar's  arm  affectionately, 
and  the  two,  conversing  as  they  went,  waded 
slowly  through  the  luxuriant  bracken,  sun-mot- 
tled under  the  trees,  and  on  over  the  stile  in 
the  park  palings,  and  so  across  the  bee-swarming 
heather  for  a  mile  or  more,  down  the  hillside, 
home. 

You  would  have  been  charmed  at  the  couple 
could  you  have  seen  them.  The  Angel,  slight 
of  figure,  scarcely  five  feet  high,  and  with  a 
beautiful,  almost  effeminate  face,  such  as  an 
Italian  old  Master  might  have  painted.  (In- 
deed, there  is  one  in  the  National  Gallery 
[Tobias  and  the  Angel,  by  some  artist  unknown] 
not  at  all  unlike  him  so  far  as  face  and  spirit 
go.)  He  was  robed  simply  in  a  purple-wrought 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  33 

saffron  blouse,  bare-kneed  and  bare-footed,  with 
his  wings  (broken  now,  and  a  leaden  grey) 
folded  behind  him.  The  Vicar  was  a  short, 
rather  stout  figure,  rubicund,  red-haired,  clean- 
shaven, and  with  bright  ruddy  brown  eyes.  He 
wore  a  piebald  straw  hat  with  a  black  ribbon,  a 
very  neat  white  tie,  and  a  fine  gold  watch-chain. 
He  was  so  greatly  interested  in  his  companion 
that  it  only  occurred  to  him  when  he  was  in 
sight  of  the  Vicarage  that  he  had  left  his  gun 
lying  just  where  he  had  dropped  it  amongst  the 
bracken. 

He  was  rejoiced  to  hear  that  the  pain  of  the 
bandaged  wing  fell  rapidly  in  intensity. 


JP AKENTHESIS  ON  ANGELS. 
IX. 

LET  us  be  plain.  The  Angel  of  this  story  is 
the  Angel  of  Art,  not  the  Angel  that  one  must 
be  irreverent  to  touch  —  neither  the  Angel  of 
religious  feeling  nor  the  Angel  of  popular  belief. 
The  last  we  all  know.  She  is  alone  among  the 
angelic  hosts  in  being  distinctly  feminine:  she 
wears  a  robe  of  immaculate,  unmitigated  white 
with  sleeves,  is  fair,  with  long  golden  tresses, 
and  has  eyes  of  the  blue  of  Heaven.  Just  a 
pure  woman  she  is,  pure  maiden  or  pure  matron, 
in  her  robe  de  nuit,  and  with  wings  attached  to 
her  shoulder  blades.  Her  callings  are  domestic 
and  sympathetic,  she  watches  over  a  cradle  or 
assists  a  sister  soul  heavenward.  Often  she 
bears  a  palm  leaf,  but  one  would  not  be  sur- 
prised if  one  met  her  carrying  a  warming-pan 
softly  to  some  poor  chilly  sinner.  She  it  was 
who  came  down  in  a  bevy  to  Marguerite  in 
prison,  in  the  amended  last  scene  in  Faust  at 

34 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  35 

the  Lyceum,  and  the  interesting  and  improving 
little  children  that  are  to  die  young  have  visions 
of  such  angels  in  the  novels  of  Mrs.  Henry 
Wood.  This  white  womanliness,  with  her  in- 
describable charm  of  lavender- like  holiness,  her 
aroma  of  clean,  methodical  lives,  is,  it  would 
seem  after  all,  a  purely  Teutonic  invention. 
Latin  thought  knows  her  not;  the  old  masters 
have  none  of  her.  She  is  of  a  piece  with  that 
gentle  innocent  ladylike  school  of  art  whereof 
the  greatest  triumph  is  "a  lump  in  one's 
throat,"  and  where  wit  and  passion,  scorn  and 
pomp,  have  no  place.  The  white  angel  was 
made  in  Germany,  in  the  land  of  blonde  women 
and  the  domestic  sentiments.  She  comes  to  us 
cool  and  worshipful,  pure  and  tranquil,  as  si- 
lently soothing  as  the  breadth  and  calmness  of 
the  starlit  sky,  which  also  is  so  unspeakably 
dear  to  the  Teutonic  soul.  .  .  .  We  do  her 
reverence.  And  to  the  angels  of  the  Hebrews, 
those  spirits  of  power  and  mystery,  to  Raphael, 
Zadkiel,  and  Michael,  of  whom  only  Watts  has 
caught  the  shadow,  of  whom  only  Blake  has 
seen  the  splendour,  to  them,  too,  do  we  do  rev- 
erence. 


36  THE  WONDEKFUL  VISIT. 

But  this  Angel  the  Vicar  shot  is,  we  say,  no 
such  angel  at  all,  but  the  Angel  of  Italian  art, 
polychromatic  and  gay.  He  comes  from  the  land 
of  beautiful  dreams  and  not  from  any  holier 
place.  At  best  he  is  a  popish  creature.  Bear 
patiently,  therefore,  with  his  scattered  remiges, 
and  be  not  hasty  with  your  charge  of  irrever- 
ence before  the  story  is  read. 


AT  THE  VlCAKAGE. 

X. 

THE  Curate's  wife  and  her  two  daughters  and 
Mrs.  Jehoram  were  still  playing  at  tennis  on  the 
lawn  behind  the  Vicar's  study,  playing  keenly 
and  talking  in  gasps  about  paper  patterns  for 
blouses.  But  the  Vicar  forgot  and  came  in 
that  way. 

They  saw  the  Vicar's  hat  above  the  rhodo- 
dendrons, and  a  bare  curly  head  beside  him. 
"I  must  ask  him  about  Susan  Wiggin,"  said 
the  Curate's  wife.  She  was  about  to  serve, 
and  stood  with  a  racket  in  one  hand  and  a  ball 
between  the  fingers  of  the  other.  "He  really 
ought  to  have  gone  to  see  her  —  being  the  Vicar. 
Not  George.  I Ah  !  " 

For  the  two  figures  suddenly  turned  the  cor- 
ner and  were  visible.  The  Vicar,  arm  in  arm 
with 

You  see,  it  came  on  the  Curate's  wife  sud- 
37 


38  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

denly.  The  Angel's  face  being  towards  her  she 
saw  nothing  of  the  wings.  Only  a  face  of 
unearthly  beauty  in  a  halo  of  chestnut  hair,  and 
a  graceful  figure  clothed  in  a  saffron  garment 
that  barely  reached  the  knees.  The  thought  of 
those  knees  flashed  upon  the  Vicar  at  once.  He 
too  was  horrorstruck.  So  were  the  two  girls 
and  Mrs.  Jehoram.  All  horrorstruck.  The 
Angel  stared  in  astonishment  at  the  horror- 
struck  group.  You  see,  he  had  never  seen 
anyone  horrorstruck  before. 

"Mis — ter  Hilyer!"  said  the  Curate's  wife. 
"This  is  too  much!"  She  stood  speechless  for 
a  moment.  "  Oh  !  " 

She  swept  round  upon  the  rigid  girls.  "  Come!  " 
The  Vicar  opened  and  shut  his  voiceless  mouth. 
The  world  hummed  and  spun  about  him.  There 
was  a  whirling  of  zephyr  skirts,  four  impas- 
sioned faces  sweeping  towards  the  open  door 
of  the  passage  that  ran  through  the  vicarage. 
He  felt  his  position  went  with  them. 

"Mrs.  Mendham,"  said  the  Vicar,  stepping 
forward.  "Mrs.  Mendham.  You  don't  under- 
stand  " 

"Oh!"   they  all  said  again. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  39 

One,  two,  three,  four  skirts  vanished  in  the 
doorway.  The  Vicar  staggered  half  way  across 
the  lawn  and  stopped,  aghast.  "This  comes/' 
he  heard  the  Curate's  wife  say,  out  of  the 
depth  of  the  passage,  "of  having  an  unmarried 

vicar "  The  umbrella  stand  wobbled.  The 

front  door  of  the  vicarage  slammed  like  a  min- 
ute gun.  There  was  silence  for  a  space. 

"I  might  have  thought,"  he  said.  "She  is 
always  so  hasty." 

He  put  his  hand  to  his  chin  —  a  habit  with 
him.  Then  turned  his  face  to  his  companion. 
The  Angel  was  evidently  well  bred.  He  was 
holding  up  Mrs.  Jehoram's  sunshade  —  she  had 
left  it  on  one  of  the  cane  chairs  —  and  examin- 
ing it  with  extraordinary  interest.  He  opened 
it.  "What  a  curious  little  mechanism!"  he 
said.  "What  can  it  be  for?" 

The  Vicar  did  not  answer.  The  angelic  cos- 
tume certainly  was  —  the  Vicar  knew  it  was  a 
case  for  a  French  phrase  —  but  he  could  scarcely 
remember  it.  He  so  rarely  used  French.  It 
was  not  de  trap,  he  knew.  Anything  but  de 
trop.  The  Angel  was  de  trap,  but  certainly  not 
his  costume.  Ah!  Sans  culotte! 


40  THB  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

The  Vicar  examined  his  visitor  critically  — 
for  the  first  time.  "He  will  be  difficult  to  ex- 
plain," he  said  to  himself  softly. 

The  Angel  stuck  the  sunshade  into  the  turf 
and  went  to  smell  the  sweet  briar.  The  sun- 
shine fell  upon  his  brown  hair  and  gave  it 
almost  the  appearance  of  a  halo.  He  pricked 
his  finger.  "Odd!"  he  said.  "Pain  again." 

"Yes,"  said  the  Vicar,  thinking  aloud.  "He's 
very  beautiful  and  curious  as  he  is.  I  should 
like  him  best  so.  But  I  am  afraid  I  must." 

He  approached  the  Angel  with  a  nervous 
cough. 


AT  THE  VICARAGE  —  continued. 
XL 

"THOSE,"  said  the  Vicar,  "were  ladies." 

"How  grotesque,"  said  the  Angel,  smiling 
and  smelling  the  sweet  briar.  "And  such 
quaint  shapes ! " 

"Possibly,"  said  the  Vicar.  "Did  you,  ahem, 
notice  how  they  behaved?" 

"They  went  away.  Seemed,  indeed,  to  run 
away.  Frightened?  I,  of  course,  was  fright- 
ened at  things  without  wings.  I  hope they 

were  not  frightened  at  my  wings?" 

"At  your  appearance  generally,"  said  the 
Vicar,  glancing  involuntarily  at  the  pink  feet. 

"  Dear  me !  It  never  occurred  to  me.  I  sup- 
pose I  seemed  as  odd  to  them  as  you  did  to 
me."  He  glanced  down.  "And  my  feet.  You 
have  hoofs  like  a  hippogriff." 

"Boots,"  corrected  the  Vicar. 

"Boots,  you  call  them!     But  anyhow,   I  am 

sorry  I  alarmed " 

41 


42  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"You  see,"  said  the  Vicar,  stroking  his 
chin,  "our  ladies,  ahem,  have  peculiar  views  — 
rather  inartistic  views — about,  ahem,  clothing. 
Dressed  as  you  are,  I  am  afraid,  I  am  really  afraid 
that  —  beautiful  as  your  costume  certainly  is 
—  you  will  find  yourself  somewhat,  ahem,  some- 
what isolated  in  society.  We  have  a  little 
proverb,  'When  in  Rome,  ahem,  one  must  do 
as  the  Romans  do.'  I  can  assure  you  that, 
assuming  you  are  desirous  to,  ahem,  associate 
with  us  —  during  your  involuntary  stay " 

The  Angel  retreated  a  step  or  so  as  the  Vicar 
came  nearer  arid  nearer  in  his  attempt  to  be 
diplomatic  and  confidential.  The  beautiful  face 
grew  perplexed.  "I  don't  quite  understand. 
Why  do  you  keep  making  these  noises  in  your 
throat?  Is  it  Die  or  Eat,  or  any  of  those.  ..." 

"As  your  host,"  interrupted  the  Vicar,  and 
stopped. 

"As  my  host,"  said  the  Angel. 

"  Would  you  object,  pending  more  permanent 
arrangements,  to  invest  yourself,  ahem,  in  a 
suit,  an  entirely  new  suit  I  may  say,  like  this 
I  have  on?" 

"Oh!"  said  the  Angel.     He  retreated  so  as 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

to  take  in  the  Vicar  from  top  to  toe.  "Wear 
clothes  like  yours ! "  he  said.  He  was  puzzled 
but  amused.  His  eyes  grew  round  and  bright, 
his  mouth  puckered  at  the  corners. 

"  Delightful ! "  he  said,  clapping  his  hands 
together.  "What  a  mad,  quaint  dream  this  is! 
Where  are  they?"  He  caught  at  the  neck  of 
the  saffron  robe. 

"Indoors!  "  said  the  Vicar.  "This  way.  We 
will  change  —  indoors ! " 


AT  THE  VICARAGE  —  continued. 
XII. 

So  the  Angel  was  invested  in  a  pair  of  nether 
garments  of  the  Vicar's,  a  shirt,  ripped  down 
the  back  (to  accommodate  the  wings),  socks, 
shoes  —  the  Vicar's  dress  shoes  —  collar,  tie,  and 
light  overcoat.  But  putting  on  the  latter  was 
painful,  and  reminded  the  Vicar  that  the  band- 
aging was  temporary.  "I  will  ring  for  tea  at 
once,  and  send  Grummet  down  for  Crump,"  said 
the  Vicar.  "And  dinner  shall  be  earlier." 
While  the  Vicar  shouted  his  orders  on  the 
landing  rails,  the  Angel  surveyed  himself  in 
the  cheval  glass  with  immense  delight.  If  he 
was  a  stranger  to  pain,  he  was  evidently  no 
stranger  —  thanks  perhaps  to  dreaming  —  to  the 
pleasure  of  incongruity. 

They  had  tea  in  the  drawing-room.  The 
Angel  sat  on  the  music  stool  (music  stool  be- 
cause of  his  wings).  At  first  he  wanted  to  lie 

44 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  45 

on  the  hearthrug.  He  looked  much  less  radiant 
in  the  Vicar's  clothes,  than  he  had  done  upon 
the  moor  when  dressed  in  saffron.  His  face 
shone  still,  the  colour  of  his  hair  and  cheeks 
was  strangely  bright,  and  there  was  a  super- 
human light  in  his*  eyes,  but  his  wings  under 
the  overcoat  gave  him  the  appearance  of  a 
hunchback.  The  garments,  indeed,  made  quite 
a  terrestrial  thing  of  him;  the  trousers  were 
puckered  transversely,  and  the  shoes  a  size  or 
so  too  large. 

He  was  charmingly  affable  and  quite  ignorant 
of  the  most  elementary  facts  of  civilisation. 
Eating  came  without  much  difficulty,  and  the 
Vicar  had  an  entertaining  time  teaching  him 
how  to  take  tea.  "What  a  mess  it  is!  What 
a  dear  grotesque  ugly  world  you  live  in ! "  said 
the  Angel.  "Fancy  stuffing  things  into  your 
mouth!  We  use  our  mouths  just  to  talk  and 
sing  with.  Our  world,  you  know,  is  almost 
incurably  beautiful.  We  get  so  very  little  ugli- 
ness, that  I  find  all  this  .  .  .  delightful." 

Mrs.  Hinijer,  the  Vicar's  housekeeper,  looked 
at  the  Angel  suspiciously  when  she  brought  in 
the  tea.  She  thought  him  rather  a  "  queer  cus- 


46  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

tomer."  What  she  would  have  thought  had  she 
seen  him  in  saffron  no  one  can  tell. 

The  Angel  shuffled  about  the  room  with  his 
•cup  of  tea  in  one  hand,  and  the  bread  and  butter 
in  the  other,  and  examined  the  Vicar's  furni- 
ture. Outside  the  French  windows  the  lawn, 
with  its  array  of  dahlias  and  sunflowers,  glowed 
in  the  warm  sunlight,  and  Mrs.  Jehoram's  sun- 
shade stood  thereon  like  a  triangle  of  fire.  He 
thought  the  Vicar's  portrait  over  the  mantel 
very  curious  indeed,  could  not  understand  what 
it  was  there  for.  "You  have  yourself  round," 
he  said,  apropos  of  the  portrait,  "Why  want 
yourself  flat  ?  "  and  he  was  vastly  amused  at  the 
glass  fire  screen.  He  found  the  oak  chairs  odd 
—  "You're  not  square,  are  you?"  he  said,  when 
the  Vicar  explained  their  use.  "  We  never 
double  ourselves  up.  We  lie  about  on  the 
asphodel  when  we  want  to  rest." 

"The  chair,"  said  the  Vicar,  "to  tell  you  the 
truth,  has  always  puzzled  me.  It  dates,  I  think, 
from  the  days  when  the  floors  were  cold  and 
very  dirty.  I  suppose  we  have  kept  up  the 
habit.  It's  become  a  kind  of  instinct  with  us 
to  sit  on  chairs.  Anyhow,  if  I  went  to  see  one 


THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT.  47 

of  my  parishioners,  and  suddenly  spread  myself 
out  on  the  floor  —  the  natural  way  of  it  —  I  don't 
know  what  she  would  do.  It  would  be  all  over 
the  parish  in  no  time.  Yet  it  seems  the  natural 
method  of  reposing,  to  recline.  The  Greeks  and 
Romans " 

"What  is  this?"   said  the  Angel  abruptly. 

"That's  a  stuffed  kingfisher.     I  killed  it." 

"Killed  it!" 

"Shot  it,"  said  the  Vicar,  "with  a  gun." 

"Shot!     As  you  did  me?" 

"I  didn't  kill  you,  you  see.     Fortunately." 

"Is  killing  making  like  that?" 

"In  a  way." 

"Dear  me!  And  you  wanted  to  make  me  like 
that  —  wanted  to  put  glass  eyes  in  me  and  string 
me  up  in  a  glass  case  full  of  ugly  green  and 
brown  stuff?" 

"You  see,"  began  the  Vicar,  "I  scarcely 
understood " 

"Is  that  'die'?"   asked  the  Angel  suddenly. 

"That  is  dead;   it  died." 

"Poor  little  thing.  I  must  eat  a  lot.  But 
you  say  you  killed  it.  Why?" 

"You  see,"  said  the  Vicar,  "I  take  an  interest 


48  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

in  birds,  and  I  (ahem)  collect  them.  I  wanted 
the  specimen " 

The  Angel  stared  at  him  for  a  moment  with 
puzzled  eyes.  "A  beautiful  bird  like  that!" 
he  said  with  a  shiver.  "  Because  the  fancy  took 
you.  You  wanted  the  specimen ! " 

He  thought  for  a  minute.  "Do  you  often 
kill?"  he  asked  the  Vicar. 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE. 
XIII. 

THEN  Doctor  Crump  arrived.  Grummet  had 
met  him  not  a  hundred  yards  from  the  vicarage 
gate.  He  was  a  large,  rather  heavy-looking  man, 
with  a  clean-shaven  face  and  a  double  chin.  He 
was  dressed  in  a  grey  morning  coat  (he  always 
affected  grey),  with  a  chequered  black  and  white 
tie.  "  What's  the  trouble  ?  "  he  said,  entering  and 
staring  without  a  shadow  of  surprise  at  the 
Angel's  radiant  face. 

"This  —  ahem  —  gentleman,"  said  the  Vicar, 
"  or  —  ah  —  Angel "  —  the  Angel  bowed  —  "is 
suffering  from  a  gunshot  wound." 

"  Gunshot  wound !  "  said  Doctor  Crump.  "  In 
July !  May  I  look  at  it,  Mr.  —  Angel,  I  think  you 
said?" 

"  He  will  probably  be  able  to  assuage  your  pain," 
said  the  Vicar.  "Let  me  assist  you  to  remove 
your  coat  ?  " 

K  49 


50  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

The  Angel  turned  obediently. 

"  Spinal  curvature  ?  "  muttered  Doctor  Crump 
quite  audibly,  walking  round  behind  the  AngeL 
"  No  !  abnormal  growth.  Hullo !  This  is  odd  ! " 
He  clutched  the  left  wing.  "  Curious,"  he  said. 
"Reduplication  of  the  anterior  limb  —  bifid  cora- 
coid.  Possible,  of  course,  but  I've  never  seen 
it  before."  The  Angel  winced  under  his  hands. 
"  Humerus.  Radius  and  Ulna.  All  there.  Con- 
genital, of  course.  Humerus  broken.  Curious 
integumentary  simulation  of  feathers.  Dear  me. 
Almost  avian.  Probably  of  considerable  interest 

in  comparative  anatomy.  I  never  did! How 

did  this  gunshot  happen,  Mr.  Angel  ?  " 

The  Vicar  was  amazed  at  the  Doctor's  matter- 
of-fact  manner. 

"  Our  friend,"  said  the  Angel,  moving  his  head 
at  the  Vicar. 

"  Unhappily  it  is  my  doing,"  said  the  Vicar, 
stepping  forward,  explanatory.  "  I  mistook  the 
gentleman  —  the  Angel  (ahem) — for  a  large 
bird " 

"Mistook  him  for  a  large  bird!  What  next? 
Your  eyes  want  seeing  to,"  said  Doctor  Crump. 
"I've  told  you  so  before."  He  went  on  patting 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  51 

and  feeling,  keeping  time  with  a  series  of  grunts 
and  inarticulate  muttering.  .  .  .  "But  this  is 
really  a  very  good  bit  of  amateur  bandaging,"  said 
he.  "  I  think  I  shall  leave  it.  Curious  malfor- 
mation this  is!  Don't  you  find  it  inconvenient, 
Mr.  Angel?" 

He  suddenly  walked  round  so  as  to  look  in  the 
Angel's  face. 

The  Angel  thought  he  referred  to  the  wound. 
"  It  is  rather,"  he  said. 

"  If  it  wasn't  for  the  bones  I  should  say  paint 
with  iodine  night  and  morning.  Nothing  like 
iodine.  You  could  paint  your  face  flat  with  it. 
But  the  osseous  outgrowth,  the  bones,  you  know, 
complicate  things.  I  could  saw  them  off,  of 
course.  It's  not  a  thing  one  should  have  done 
in  a  hurry " 

"  Do  you  mean  my  wings  ?  "  said  the  Angel  in 
alarm. 

44  Wings  ! "  said  the  Doctor.  44  Eigh  ?  Call  'em 
wings  !  Yes  —  what  else  should  I  mean  ?  " 

44  Saw  them  off !  "  said  the  Angel. 

44  Don't  you  think  so  ?  It's  of  course  your  affair. 
I  am  only  advising " 

44 Saw  them  off!  What  a  funny  creature  you 
are ! "  said  the  Angel,  beginning  to  laugh. 


52  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"As  you  will,"  said  the  Doctor.  He  detested 
people  who  laughed.  "The  things  are  curious," 
he  said,  turning  to  the  Vicar-  "If  inconvenient" 
—  to  the  Angel.  "I  never  heard  of  such  com- 
plete reduplication  before  —  at  least  among  ani- 
mals. In  plants  it's  common  enough.  Were  you 
the  only  one  in  your  family  ?  "  He  did  not  wait 
for  a  reply.  "  Partial  cases  of  the  fission  of  limbs 
are  not  at  all  uncommon,  of  course,  Vicar  —  six- 
fingered  children,  calves  with  six  feet,  and  cats 
with  double  toes,  you  know."  May  I  assist  you  ?  " 
he  said,  turning  to  the  Angel  who  was  struggling 
with  the  coat.  "But  such  a  complete  reduplica- 
tion, and  so  avian,  too!  It  would  be  much  less 
remarkable  if  it  was  simply  another  pair  of  arms." 

The  coat  was  got  on  and  he  and  the  Angel 
stared  at  one  another. 

"Really,"  said  the  Doctor,  "one  begins  to 
understand  how  that  beautiful  myth  of  the  angels 
arose.  You  look  a  little  hectic,  Mr.  Angel  — 
feverish.  Excessive  brilliance  is  almost  worse 
as  a  symptom  than  excessive  pallor.  Curious 
your  name  should  be  Angel.  I  must  send  you 
a  cooling  draught,  if  you  should  feel  thirsty  in 
the  night.  .  .  ." 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  53 

He  made  a  memorandum  on  his  shirt  cuff. 
The  Angel  watched  him  thoughtfully,  with  the 
dawn  of  a  smile  in  his  eyes. 

"One  minute,  Crump,"  said  the  Vicar,  taking 
the  Doctor's  arm  and  leading  him  towards  the 
door. 

The  Angel's  smile  grew  brighter.  He  looked 
down  at  his  black-clad  legs.  "He  positively 
thinks  I  am  a  man!"  said  the  Angel.  "What 
he  makes  of  the  wings  beats  me  altogether. 
What  a  queer  creature  he  must  be !  This  is 
really  a  most  extraordinary  Dream!" 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE  —  continued. 
XIV. 

"THAT  is  an  Angel,"  whispered  the  Vicar. 
"  You  don't  understand." 

"  What?"  said  the  Doctor  in  a  quick,  sharp 
voice.  His  eyebrows  went  up  and  he  smiled. 

"  But  the  wings  ?  " 

"  Quite  natural,  quite  .   .   .  if  a  little  abnormal." 

"  Are  you  sure  they  are  natural  ?  " 

"  My  dear  fellow,  everything  that  is,  is  natural. 
There  is  nothing  unnatural  in  the  world.  If  I 
thought  there  was  I  should  give  up  practice  and 
go  into  Le  Grand  Chartreuse.  There  are  abnor- 
mal phenomena,  of  course.  And v 

"  But  the  way  I  came  upon  him,"  said  the  Vicar. 

"  Yes,  tell  me  where  you  picked  him  up,"  said 
the  Doctor.  He  sat  down  on  the  hall  table. 

The  Vicar  began  rather  hesitatingly  —  he  was 
not  very  good  at  story  telling  —  with  the  rumours 
of  a  strange  great  bird.  He  told  the  story  in 

clumsy  sentences  —  for,  knowing  the  Bishop  as  he 

54 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  55 

did,  with  that  awful  example  always  before  him 
he  dreaded  getting  his  pulpit  style  into  his  daily 
conversation  —  and  at  every  third  sentence  or  so, 
the  Doctor  made  a  downward  movement  of  his 
head  —  the  corners  of  his  mouth  tucked  away,  so 
to  speak  —  as  though  he  ticked  off  the  phases  of 
the  story  and  so  far  found  it  just  as  it  ought  to  be. 
"  Self-hypnotism,"  he  murmured  once. 

"I  beg  your  pardon?"  said  the  Vicar. 

"  Nothing,"  said  the  Doctor.  "  Nothing,  I  assure 
you.  Go  on.  This  is  extremely  interesting." 

The  Vicar  told  him  he  went  out  with  his  gun. 

"After  lunch,  I  think  you  said?"  interrupted 
the  Doctor. 

44  Immediately  after,"  said  the  Vicar. 

"You  should  not  do  such  things,  you  know. 
But  go  on,  please." 

He  came  to  the  glimpse  of  the  Angel  from  the 
gate. 

"  In  the  full  glare,"  said  the  Doctor,  in  paren- 
thesis. "  It  was  seventy-nine  in  the  shade." 

When  the  Vicar  had  finished,  the  Doctor  pressed 
his  lips  together  tighter  than  ever,  smiled  faintly, 
and  looked  significantly  into  the  Vicar's  eyes. 

"  You  don't  ..."  began  the  Vicar,  falteringly. 


56  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

The  Doctor  shook  his  head.  "  Forgive  me,"  he 
said,  putting  his  hand  on  the  Vicar's  arm. 

"  You  go  out,"  he  said,  "  on  a  hot  lunch  and  on 
a  hot  afternoon.  Probably  over  eighty.  Your 
inind,  what  there  is  of  it,  is  whirling  with  avian 
expectations.  I  say,  *  what  there  is  of  it,'  because 
most  of  your  nervous  energy  is  down  there,  digest- 
ing your  dinner.  A  man  who  has  been  lying  in 
the  bracken  stands  up  before  you  and  you  blaze 
away.  Over  he  goes  —  and  as  it  happens  —  as  it 
happens  —  he  has  reduplicate  fore-limbs,  one  pair 
being  not  unlike  wings.  It's  a  coincidence  cer- 
tainly. And  as  for  his  iridescent  colours  and  so 
forth Have  you  never  had  patches  of  col- 
our swim  before  your  eyes  before,  on  a  brilliant 
sunlight  day  ?  .  .  .  Are  you  sure  they  were  con- 
fined to  the  wings  ?  Think." 

"  But  he  says  he  IB  an  Angel ! "  said  the  Vicar, 
staring  out  of  his  little  round  eyes,  his  plump 
hands  in  his  pockets. 

"Ah!"  said  the  Doctor  with  his  eye  on  the 
Vicar.'  "I  expected  as  much."  He  paused. 

"  But  don't  you  think  ..."  began  the  Vicar. 

"  That  man,"  said  the  Doctor  in  a  low,  earnest 
voice,  "  is  a  mattoid." 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  57 

"A  what?"  said  the  Vicar. 
/'  A  mattoid.    An  abnormal  man.   Did  you  notice 
the  effeminate  delicacy  of  his  face  ?     His  tendency 
to    quite    unmeaning   laughter?     His   neglected 
hair?     Then  consider  his  singular  dress  .  .  .  ' 

The  Vicar's  hand  went  up  to  his  chin. 

"  Marks  of  mental  weakness,"  said  the  Doctor. 
"  Many  of  this  type  of  degenerate  show  this  same 
disposition  to  assume  some  vast  mysterious  creden- 
tials. One  will  call  himself  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
another  the  Archangel  Gabriel,  another  the  Deity 
even.  Ibsen  thinks  he  is  a  Great  Teacher,  and 
IMaeterlink  a  new  Shakespeare.  I've  just  been 
reading  all  about  it  —  in  Nordau.  No  doubt  his 
-  odd  deformity  gave  him  an  idea.  .  .  ." 

"  But  really,"  began  the  Vicar. 

"  No  doubt  he's  slipped  away  from  confinement." 

"  I  do  not  altogether  accept  .  .  .  ' 

"You  will.  If  not,  there's  the  police,  and 
failing  that,  advertisement ;  but,  of  course,  his 
people  may  want  to  hush  it  up.  It's  a  sad  thing 
in  a  family.  ..." 

"  He  seems  so  altogether  ..." 

"  Probably  you'll  hear  from  his  friends  in  a  day 
or  so,"  said  the  Doctor,  feeling  for  his  watch. 


58  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"He  can't  live  far  from  here,  I  should  think. 
He  seems  harmless  enough.  I  must  come  along 
and  see  that  wing  again  to-morrow."  He  slid 
off  the  hall  table  and  stood  up. 

"  Those  old  wives'  tales  still  have  their  hold  on 
you,"  he  said,  patting  the  Vicar  on  the  shoulder. 
"  But  an  angel,  you  know  —  ha,  ha ! " 

"I  certainly  did  think  .  .  ."  said  the  Vicar 
dubiously. 

"Weigh  the  evidence,"  said  the  Doctor,  still 
fumbling  at  his  watch.  "Weigh  the  evidence 
with  our  instruments  of  precision.  What  does 
it  leave  you  ?  Splashes  of  colour,  spots  of  fancy 
—  muscce  volantes" 

"And  yet,"  said  the  Vicar,  "I  could  almost 
swear  to  the  glory  on  his  wings.  .  .  ." 

"  Think  it  over,"  said  the  Doctor  (watch  out)  ; 
"  hot  afternoon — brilliant  sunshine — boiling  down 
on  your  head.  ...  But  really  I  must  be  going. 
It  is  a  quarter  to  five.  I'll  see  your  —  angel  (ha, 
ha !)  to-morrow  again,  if  no  one  has  been  to  fetch 
him  in  the  meanwhile.  Your  bandaging  was 
really  very  good.  I  flatter  myself  on  that  score. 
Our  ambulance  classes  were  a  success  you  see. 
Good  afternoon." 


THE  CURATE. 
XV. 

THE  Vicar  opened  the  door  half  mechanically 
to  let  out  Crump,  and  saw  Mendham,  his  curate, 
coming  up  the  pathway  by  the  hedge  of  purple 
vetch  and  meadowsweet.  At  that  his  hand  went 
up  to  his  chin  and  his  eyes  grew  perplexed.  Sup- 
pose he  was  deceived.  The  Doctor  passed  the 
Curate  with  a  sweep  of  his  hand  from  his  hat 
brim.  Crump  was  an  extraordinarily  clever  fel- 
low, the  Vicar  thought,  and  knew  far  more  of 
anyone's  brain  than  one  did  oneself.  The  Vicar 
felt  that  so  acutely.  It  made  the  coming  ex- 
planation difficult.  Suppose  he  were  to  go  back 
into  the  drawing-room,  and  find  just  a  tramp 
asleep  on  the  hearthrug. 

Mendham  was  a  cadaverous  man  with  a  mag- 
nificent beard.  He  looked,  indeed,  as  though  he 
had  run  to  beard  as  a  mustard  plant  does  to  seed. 
But  when  he  spoke  you  found  he  had  a  voice  as 
well. 


60  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"  My  wife  came  home  in  a  dreadful  state,"  he 
brayed  out  at  long  range. 

"Come  in,"  said  the  Vicar;  "come  in.  Most 
remarkable  occurrence.  Please  come  in.  Come 
into  the  study.  I'm  really  dreadfully  sorry.  But 
when  I  explain  ..." 

"  And  apologise,  I  hope,"  brayed  the  Curate. 

"  And  apologise.  No,  not  that  way.  This  way. 
The  study." 

"  Now  what  was  that  woman  ?  "  said  the  Curate, 
turning  on  the  Vicar  as  the  latter  closed  the  study 
door. 

"  What  woman  ?  " 

"Pah!" 

"But  really!" 

"  The  painted  creature  in  light  attire  —  disgust- 
ingly light  attire,  to  speak  freely  —  with  whom 
you  were  promenading  the  garden." 

"  My  dear  Mendham  —  that  was  an  Angel ! " 

"  A  very  pretty  Angel  ?  " 

"The  world  is  getting  so  matter-of-fact,"  said 
the  Vicar. 

"  The  world,"  roared  the  Curate,  "grows  blacker 
every  day.  But  to  find  a  man  in  your  position, 
shamelessly,  openly  .  .  ." 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  61 

"  Bother ! "  said  the  Vicar  aside.  He  rarely 
swore.  "Look  here,  Mendham,  you  really  mis- 
understand. I  can  assure  you  ..." 

"Very  well,"  said  the  Curate.  "Explain!" 
He  stood  with  his  lank  legs  apart,  his  arms  folded, 
scowling  at  his  Vicar  over  his  big  beard. 

(Explanations,  I  repeat,  I  have  always  consid- 
ered the  peculiar  fallacy  of  this  scientific  age.) 

The  Vicar  looked  about  him  helplessly.  The 
world  had  all  gone  dull  and  dead.  Had  he  been 
dreaming  all  the  afternoon  ?  Was  there  really  an 
angel  in  the  drawing-room  ?  Or  was  he  the  sport 
of  a  complicated  hallucination? 

"Well?"  said  Mendham,  at  the  end  of  a  minute. 

The  Vicar's  hand  fluttered  about  his  chin. 
"It's  such  a  roundabout  story,"  he  said. 

"  No  doubt  it  will  be,"  said  Mendham  harshly. 

The  Vicar  restrained  a  movement  of  impatience. 

"  I  went  out  to  look  for  a  strange  bird  this 
afternoon.  .  .  .  Do  you  believe  in  angels,  Mend- 
ham,  real  angels?" 

"I'm  not  here  to  discuss  theology.  I  am  the 
husband  of  an  insulted  woman." 

"  But  I  tell  you  it's  not  a  figure  of  speech ;  this 
is  an  angel,  a  real  angel  with  wings.  He's  in 


62  THE  WONDEKFUL  VISIT. 

the  next  room  now.  You  do  misunderstand  me, 
so  .  .  ." 

"Really,  Hilyer  —  " 

"It  is  true  I  tell  you,  Mendham.  I  swear  it 
is  true."  The  Vicar's  voice  grew  impassioned. 
"What  sin  I  have  done  that  I  should  entertain 
and  clothe  angelic  visitants,  I  don't  know.  I  only 
know  that  —  inconvenient  as  it  undoubtedly  will 
be — I  have  an  angel  now  in  the  drawing-room, 
wearing  my  new  suit  and  finishing  his  tea.  And 
he's  stopping  with  me,  indefinitely,  at  my  invita- 
tion. No  doubt  it  was  rash  of  me.  But  I  can't 
turn  him  out,  you  know,  because  Mrs.  Mendham 

1  may  be  a  weakling,  but  I  am  still  a 

gentleman." 

"Really,  Hilyer— " 

"I  can  assure  you  it  is  true."  There  was  a 
note  of  hysterical  desperation  in  the  Vicar's  voice. 
"I  fired  at  him,  taking  him  for  a  flamingo,  and 
hit  him  in  the  wing." 

"I  thought  this  was  a  case  for  the  Bishop. 
I  find  it  is  a  case  for  the  Lunacy  Commis- 
sioners." 

"  Come  and  see  him,  Mendham ! " 

"But  there  are  no  angels." 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  63 

"We  teach  the  people  differently,"  said  the 
Vicar. 

"  Not  as  material  bodies,"  said  the  Curate. 

"  Anyhow,  come  and  see  him." 

"I  don't  want  to  see  your  hallucinations," 
began  the  Curate. 

"  I  can't  explain  anything  unless  you  come  and 
see  him,"  said  the  Vicar.  "A  man  who's  more 
like  an  angel  than  anything  else  in  heaven  or 
earth.  You  simply  must  see  if  you  wish  to 
understand." 

"  I  don't  wish  to  understand,"  said  the  Curate. 
"I  don't  wish  to  lend  myself  to  any  imposture. 
Surely,  Hilyer,  if  this  is  not  an  imposition,  you 
can  tell  me  yourself.  .  .  .  Flamingo,  indeed !  " 


THE  CURATE  —  continued. 
XVI. 

THE  Angel  had  finished  his  tea  and  was  stand- 
ing looking  pensively  out  of  the  window.  He 
thought  the  old  church  down  the  valley  lit  by  the 
light  of  the  setting  sun  was  very  beautiful,  but  he 
could  not  understand  the  serried  ranks  of  tomb- 
stones that  lay  up  the  hillside  beyond.  He  turned 
as  Mendham  and  the  Vicar  came  in. 

Now  Mendham  could  bully  his  Vicar  cheerfully 
enough,  just  as  he  could  bully  his  congregation ; 
but  he  was  not  the  sort  of  man  to  bully  a  stranger. 
He  looked  at  the  Angel,  and  the  "strange  woman" 
theory  was  disposed  of.  The  Angel's  beauty  was 
too  clearly  the  beauty  of  the  youth. 

"  Mr.  Hilyer  tells  me,"  Mendham  began,  in  an 
almost  apologetic  tone,  "  that  you  —  ah  —  it's  so 
curious  —  claim  to  be  an  Angel." 

"  Are  an  Angel,"  said  the  Vicar. 

The  Angel  bowed. 

64 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  65 

"  Naturally,"  said  Mendham,  "  we  are  curious." 

"  Very,"  said  the  Angel.  "  The  blackness  and 
the  shape." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon  ?  "  said  Mendham. 

"The  blackness  and  the  flaps,"  repeated  the 
Angel;  "and  no  wings." 

"  Precisely,"  said  Mendham,  who  was  altogether 
•Sit  a  loss.  "We  are,  of  course,  curious  to  know 
something  of  how  you  came  into  the  village  in 
such  a  peculiar  costume." 

The  Angel  looked  at  the  Vicar.  The  Vicar 
touched  his  chin. 

"You  see,"  began  the  Vicar. 

"  Let  him  explain,"  said  Mendham ;  "  I  beg." 

"  I  wanted  to  suggest,"  began  the  Vicar. 

"  And  I  don't  want  you  to  suggest." 

"  Bother  !  "  said  the  Vicar. 

The  Angel  looked  from  one  to  the  other. 
"Such  rugose  expressions  flit  across  your  faces!" 
he  said. 

"You  see,  Mr. — Mr. — I  don't  know  your 
name,"  said  Mendham,  with  a  certain  diminution 
of  suavity.  "The  case  stands  thus:  My  wife  — 
four  ladies,  I  might  say  —  are  playing  lawn  tennis, 
when  you  suddenly  rush  out  on  them,  sir;  you 


66  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

rush  out  on  them  from  among  the  rhododendra  in 
a  very  defective  costume.  You  and  Mr.  Hilyer." 

"  But  I  — "  said  the  Vicar. 

"I  know.  It  was  this  gentleman's  costume 
was  defective.  Naturally  — it  is  my  place  in  fact 
—  to  demand  an  explanation."  His  voice  was 
growing  in  volume.  "  And  I  must  demand  an 
explanation." 

The  Angel  smiled  faintly  at  his  note  of  anger 
and  his  sudden  attitude  of  determination  —  arms 
tightly  folded. 

"I  am  rather  new  to  the  world,"  the  Angel 
began. 

"Nineteen  at  least,"  said  Mendham.  "Old 
enough  to  know  better.  That's  a  poor  excuse." 

"May  I  ask  one  question  first?"  said  the 
Angel. 

"Well?" 

"Do  you  think  I  am  a  Man  —  like  yourself? 
As  the  chequered  man  did." 

"  If  you  are  not  a  man  — " 

"  One  other  question.  Have  you  never  heard 
of  an  Angel?" 

"I  warn  you  not  to  try  that  story  upon  me," 
said  Mendham,  now  back  at  his  familiar  crescendo. 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  67 

The  Vicar  interrupted:  "But  Mendham  —  he 
has  wings ! " 

"  Please  let  me  talk  to  him,"  said  Mendham. 

"You  are  so  quaint,"  said  the  Angel;  "you 
interrupt  everything  I  have  to  say." 

"  But  what  have  you  to  say  ?  "  said  Mendham. 

"  That  I  really  am  an  Angel  ..." 

"  Pshaw ! " 

"  There  you  go ! " 

"  But  tell  me,  honestly,  how  you  came  to  be  in 
the  shrubbery  of  Siddermorton  Vicarage  —  in  the 
state  in  which  you  were.  And  in  the  Vicar's  com- 
pany. Cannot  you  abandon  this  ridiculous  story 
of  yours  ?  .  .  ." 

The  Angel  shrugged  his  wings.  "  What  is  the 
matter  with  this  man?"  he  said  to  the  Vicar. 

"My  dear  Mendham,"  said  the  Vicar,  "a  few 
words  from  me  .  .  ." 

"  Surely  my  question  is  straightforward 
enough ! " 

"  But  you  won't  tell  me  the  answer  you  want, 
and  it's  no  good  my  telling  you  any  other." 

"Pshaw!"  said  the  Curate  again.  And  then 
turning  suddenly  on  the  Vicar,  "Where  does  he 
come  from?" 


68  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

The  Vicar  was  in  a  dreadful  state  of  doubt  by 
this  time. 

"  He  says  he  is  an  Angel ! "  said  the  Vicar. 
"Why  don't  you  listen  to  him?" 

"  No  angel  would  alarm  four  ladies  ..." 

"Is  that  what  it  is  all  about?"  said  the 
Angel. 

"  Enough  cause  too,  I  should  think ! "  said  the 
Curate. 

"  But  I  really  did  not  know,"  said  the  Angel. 

"  This  is  altogether  too  much !  " 

"  I  am  sincerely  sorry  I  alarmed  these  ladies." 

"  You  ought  to  be.  But  I  see  I  shall  get 
nothing  out  of  you  two."  Mendham  went  towards 
the  door.  "  I  am  convinced  there  is  something 
discreditable  at  the  bottom  of  this  business.  Or 
why  not  tell  a  simple  straightforward  story?  I 
will  confess  you  puzzle  me.  Why,  in  this  en- 
lightened age,  you  should  tell  this  fantastic,  this 
far-fetched  story  of  an  Angel,  altogether  beats- 
me.  What  good  can  it  do?  .  .  ." 

"  But  stop  and  look  at  his  wings ! "  said  the 
Vicar.  "  I  can  assure  you  he  has  wings !  " 

Mendham  had  his  fingers  on  the  door-handle. 
44 1  have  seen  quite  enough,"  he  said.  "It  may 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  69 

be  this  is  simply  a  foolish  attempt  at  a  hoax, 
Hilyer." 

"  But  Mendham ! "  said  the  Vicar. 

The  Curate  halted  in  the  doorway  and  looked  at 
the  Vicar  over  his  shoulder.  The  accumulating 
judgment  of  months  found  vent.  "  I  cannot  under- 
stand, Hilyer,  why  you  are  in  the  Church.  For 
the  life  of  me  I  cannot.  The  air  is  full  of  Social 
Movements,  of  Economic  change,  the  Woman 
Movement,  Rational  Dress,  The  Reunion  of  Chris- 
tendom, Socialism,  Individualism  —  all  the  great 
and  moving  Questions  of  the  Hour !  Surely,  we 
who  follow  the  Great  Reformer  .  .  .  And  here 
you  are  stuffing  birds,  and  startling  ladies  with 
your  callous  disregard  .  .  ." 

"  But  Mendham,"  began  the  Vicar. 

The  Curate  would  not  hear  him.  "  You  shame 
the  Apostles  with  your  levity  ...  But  this  is 
only  a  preliminary  enquiry,"  he  said,  with  a  threat- 
ening note  in  his  sonorous  voice,  and  so  vanished 
abruptly  (with  a  violent  slam)  from  the  room. 


THE  CUKATE —  continued. 
XVII. 

"  ARE  all  men  so  odd  as  this  ?  "  said  the  Angel. 

"  I'm  in  such  a  difficult  position,"  said  the  Vicar. 
"  You  see,"  he  said,  and  stopped,  searching  his  chin 
for  an  idea. 

"  I'm  beginning  to  see,"  said  the  Angel. 

"  They  won't  believe  it." 

"  I  see  that." 

"  They  will  think  I  tell  lies." 

"And?" 

"  That  will  be  extremely  painful  to  me." 

"Painful!  .  .  .  Pain,"  said  the  Angel.  "I  hope 
not." 

The  Vicar  shook  his  head.  The  good  report  of 
the  village  had  been  the  breath  of  his  life,  so  far. 
"  You  see,"  he  said,  "  it  would  look  so  much  more 
plausible  if  you  said  you  were  just  a  man." 

"  But  I'm  not,"  said  the  Angel. 

"No,  you're  not,"  said  the  Vicar.     "So  that's 

no  good." 

70 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  71 

"Nobody  here,  you  know,  has  ever  seen  an 
Angel,  or  heard  of  one  —  except  in  church.  If 
you  had  made  your  dSbut  in  the  chancel  —  on 
Sunday  —  it  might  have  been  different.  But 
that's  too  late  now.  .  .  .  (Bother!)  Nobody, 
absolutely  nobody,  will  believe  in  you." 

"I  hope  I  am  not  inconveniencing  you?" 

"Not  at  all,"  said  the  Vicar;  "not  at  all. 

Only Naturally  it  may  be  inconvenient 

if  you  tell  a  too  incredible  story.  If  I  might 
suggest  (ahem) " 

"Well?" 

"You  see,  people  in  the  world,  being  men 
themselves,  will  almost  certainly  regard  you  as 
a  man.  If  you  say  you  are  not,  they  will  simply 
say  you  do  not  tell  the  truth.  Only  exceptional 
people  appreciate  the  exceptional.  When  in 
Rome  one  must  —  well,  respect  Roman  preju- 
dices a  little  —  talk  Latin.  You  will  find  it 
better " 

"You  propose  I  should  feign  to  become  a 
man?" 

"You  have  my  meaning  at  once." 

The  Angel  stared  at  the  Vicar's  hollyhocks 
and  thought. 


72  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Possibly,  after  all,"  he  said  slowly,  "I  shall 
become  a  man.  I  may  have  been  too  hasty  in 
saying  I  was  not.  You  say  there  are  no  angels- 
in  this  world.  Who  am  I  to  set  myself  up 
against  your  experience?  A  mere  thing  of  a 
day  —  so  far  as  this  world  goes.  If  you  say 
there  are  no  angels  —  clearly  I  must  be  some- 
thing else.  I  eat  —  angels  do  not  eat.  I  may 
be  a  man  already." 

"  A  convenient  view,  at  any  rate,"  said  the  Vicar. 

"If  it  is  convenient  to  you " 

"It  is.  And  then  to  account  for  your  presence 
here." 

" If,"  said  the  Vicar,  after  a  hesitating  moment 
of  reflection,  "if,  for  instance,  you  had  been  an 
ordinary  man  with  a  weakness  for  wading,  and 
you  had  gone  wading  in  the  Sidder,  and  your 
clothes  had  been  stolen,  for  instance,  and  I  had 
come  upon  you  in  that  position  of  inconven- 
ience; the  explanation  I  shall  have  to  make  to 

Mrs.  Mendham would  be  shorn  at  least  of 

the  supernatural  element.  There  is  such  a  feel- 
ing against  the  supernatural  element  nowadays 
—  even  in  the  pulpit.  You  would  hardly  be- 
lieve  " 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  73 

"It's  a  pity  that  was  not  the  case,"  said  the 
Angel. 

"Of  course,"  said  the  Vicar.  "It  is  a  great 
pity  that  was  not  the  case.  But  at  any  rate 
you  will  oblige  me  if  you  do  not  obtrude  your 
angelic  nature.  You  will  oblige  everyone,  in 
fact.  There  is  a  settled  opinion  that  angels  do 
not  do  this  kind  of  thing.  And  nothing  is 
more  painful  —  as  I  can  testify  —  than  a  decay- 
ing settled  opinion.  .  .  .  Settled  opinions  are 
mental  teeth  in  more  ways  than  one.  For  my~ 
own  part,"  —  the  Vicar's  hand  passed  over  his 
eyes  for  a  moment  —  "I  cannot  but  believe  you 
are  an  angel.  .  .  .  Surely  I  can  believe  my 
own  eyes." 

"We  always  do  ours,"  said  the  Angel. 

"And  so  do  we,  within  limits." 

Then  the  clock  upon  the  mantel  chimed  sevenr 
and  almost  simultaneously  Mrs.  Hinijer  an- 
nounced  dinner. 


AFTER  DINNER. 
XVIII. 

THE  Angel  and  the  Vicar  sat  at  dinner. 
The  Vicar,  with  his  napkin  tucked  in  at  his 
neck,  watched  the  Angel  struggling  with  his 
soup.  "You  will  soon  get  into  the  way  of  it," 
said  the  Vicar.  The  knife  and  fork  business 
was  done  awkwardly  but  with  effect.  The 
Angel  looked  furtively  at  Delia,  the  little  wait- 
ing maid.  When  presently  they  sat  cracking 
nuts  —  which  the  Angel  found  congenial  enough 
—  and  the  girl  had  gone,  the  Angel  asked: 
"Was  that  a  lady,  too?" 

"Well,"  said  the  Vicar  (CracK).  "No  — she 
is  not  a  lady.  She  is  a  servant." 

"Yes,"  said  the  Angel;  "she  had  rather  a 
nicer  shape." 

"You  mustn't  tell  Mrs.  Mendham  that,"  said 
the  Vicar,  covertly  satisfied. 

"She  didn't  stick  out  so  much  at  the  shoul- 
74 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  75 

ders  and  hips,  and  there  was  more  of  her 
in  between.  And  the  colour  of  her  robes 
was  not  discordant  —  simply  neutral.  And  her 
face " 

"Mrs.  Mendham  and  her  daughters  had  been 
playing  tennis,"  said  the  Vicar,  feeling  he  ought 
not  to  listen  to  detraction  even  of  his  mortal 
enemy.  "  Do  you  like  these  things  —  these 
nuts?" 

"Very  much,"  said  the  Angel.     (Crack.} 

"You  see,"  said  the  Vicar  {Chum,  chum, 
chum).  "For  my  own  part  I  entirely  believe 
you  are  an  Angel." 

"Yes!"  said  the  Angel. 

"  I  shot  you  —  I  saw  you  flutter.  It's  beyond 
dispute.  In  my  own  mind.  I  admit  it's  curious 
and  against  my  preconceptions,  but  —  practically 
—  I'm  assured,  perfectly  assured  in  fact,  that  I 
saw  what  I  certainly  did  see.  But  after  the  be- 
haviour of  these  people.  {Crack.)  I  really  don't 
see  how  we  are  to  persuade  people.  Nowadays 
people  are  so  very  particular  about  evidence. 
So  that  I  think  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said 
for  the  attitude  you  assume.  Temporarily  at 
least  I  think  it  would  be  best  of  you  to  do  a& 


76  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

you  propose  to  do,  and  behave  as  a  man  as  far 
as  possible.  Of  course  there  is  no  knowing  how 
or  when  you  may  go  back.  After  what  has 
happened  (GlucJc,  gluck,  gluclc  —  as  the  Vicar 
refills  his  glass)  —  after  what  has  happened  I 
should  not  be  surprised  to  see  the  side  of  the 
room  fall  away,  and  the  hosts  of  heaven  appear 
to  take  you  away  again  —  take  us  both  away 
even.  You  have  so  far  enlarged  my  imagination. 
All  these  years  I  have  been  forgetting  Wonder- 
land. But  still It  will  certainly  be  wiser 

to  break  the  thing  gently  to  them." 

"This  life  of  yours,"  said  the  Angel.  "I'm 
still  in  the  dark  about  it.  How  do  you  begin?" 

"Dear  me!"  said  the  Vicar.  "Fancy  having 
to  explain  that!  We  begin  existence  here,  you 
know,  as  babies,  silly  pink  helpless  things 
wrapped  in  white,  with  goggling  eyes,  that 
yelp  dismally  at  the  Font.  Then  these  babies 
grow  larger  and  become  even  beautiful  —  when 
their  faces  are  washed.  And  they  continue  to 
grow  to  a  certain  size.  They  become  children, 
boys  and  girls,  youths  and  maidens  (Crack), 
young  men  and  young  women.  That  is  the 
finest  time  in  life,  according  to  many  —  cer- 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  77 

tainly  the  most  beautiful.  Full  of  great  hopes 
and  dreams,  vague  emotions  and  unexpected 
dangers." 

"  TJiat  was  a  maiden?"  said  the  Angel,  indi- 
cating the  door  through  which  Delia  had  disap- 
peared. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Vicar,  "that  was  a  maiden." 
And  paused  thoughtfully. 

"And  then?" 

"Then,"  said  the  Vicar,  "the  glamour  fades 
and  life  begins  in  earnest.  The  young  men 
and  young  women  pair  off  —  most  of  them. 
They  come  to  me  shy  and  bashful,  in  smart 
ugly  dresses,  and  I  marry  them.  And  then 
little  pink  babies  come  to  them,  and  some  of 
the  youths  and  maidens  that  were,  grow  fat  and 
vulgar,  and  some  grow  thin  and  shrewish,  and 
their  pretty  complexions  go,  and  they  get  a 
queer  delusion  of  superiority  over  the  younger 
people,  and  all  the  delight  and  glory  goes  out 
of  their  lives.  So  they  call  the  delight  and 
glory  of  the  younger  ones,  Illusion.  And  then 
they  begin  to  drop  to  pieces." 

"Drop  to  pieces!"  said  the  Angel.  "How- 
grotesque  ! " 


78  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Their  hair  comes  off  and  gets  dull  coloured 
or  ashen  grey,"  said  the  Vicar.  "/,  for  in- 
stance." He  bowed  his  head  forward  to  show 
a,  circular  shining  patch  the  size  of  a  florin. 
"  And  their  teeth  come  out.  Their  faces  collapse 
and  become  as  wrinkled  and  dry  as  a  shrivelled 
apple.  'Corrugated'  you  called  mine.  They 
care  more  and  more  for  what  they  have  to  eat 
and  to  drink,  and  less  and  less  for  any  of  the 
other  delights  of  life.  Their  limbs  get  loose  in 
the  joints,  and  their  hearts  slack,  or  little  pieces 
from  their  lungs  come  coughing  up.  Pain  ..." 

"Ah!"  said  the  Angel. 

"Pain  comes  into  their  lives  more  and  more. 
And  then  they  go.  They  do  not  like  to  go, 
but  they  have  to  —  out  of  this  world,  ver^ 
reluctantly,  clutching  its  pain  at  last  in  their 
eagerness  to  stop.  ..." 

"Where  do  they  go?" 

"Once  I  thought  I  knew.  But  now  I  am 
older  I  know  I  do  not  know.  We  have  a 
Legend  —  perhaps  it  is  not  a  legend.  One  may 
be  a  churchman  and  disbelieve.  Stokes  says 
there  is  nothing  in  it.  ..."  The  Vicar  shook 
his  head  at  the  bananas. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  79 

"And  you?"  said  the  Angel.  "Were  you  a 
little  pink  baby?" 

"A  little  while  ago  I  was  a  little  pink  baby." 

"Were  you  robed  then  as  you  are  now?" 

"Oh  no!  Dear  me!  What  a  queer  idea! 
Had  long  white  clothes,  I  suppose,  like  the 
rest  of  them." 

"And  then  you  were  a  little  boy?" 

"A  little  boy." 

"And  then  a  glorious  youth?" 

"  I  was  not  a  very  glorious  youth,  I  am  afraid. 
I  was  sickly,  and  too  poor  to  be  radiant,  and 
with  a  timid  heart.  I  studied  hard  and  pored 
over  the  dying  thoughts  of  men  long  dead.  So 
I  lost  the  glory,  and  no  maiden  came  to  me,  and 
the  dulness  of  life  began  too  soon." 

"  And  you  have  your  little  pink  babies  ? " 

"None,"  said  the  Vicar  with  a  scarce  percep- 
tible pause.  "Yet  all  the  same,  as  you  see,  I 
am  beginning  to  drop  to  pieces.  Presently  my 
back  will  droop  like  a  wilting  flowerstalk. 
And  then,  in  a  few  thousand  days  more  I  shall 
be  done  with,  and  I  shall  go  out  of  this  world 
of  mine.  .  .  .  Whither  I  do  not  know." 

"And  you  have  to  eat  like  this  every  day?" 


SO  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Eat,  and  get  clothes  and  keep  this  roof 
above  me.  There  are  some  very  disagreeable 
things  in  this  world  called  Cold  and  Rain.  And 
the  other  people  here  —  how  and  why  is  too  long 
a  story  —  have  made  me  a  kind  of  chorus  to 
their  lives.  They  bring  their  little  pink  babies 
to  me  and  I  have  to  say  a  name  and  some  othei 
things  over  each  new  pink  baby.  And  when  the 
children  have  grown  to  be  youths  and  maidens, 
they  come  again  and  are  confirmed.  You  will 
understand  that  better  later.  Then  before  they 
may  join  in  couples  and  have  pink  babies  of 
their  own,  they  must  come  again  and  hear  me 
read  out  of  a  book.  They  would  be  outcast,  and 
no  other  maiden  would  speak  to  the  maiden  who 
had  a  little  pink  baby  without  I  had  read  over 
her  for  twenty  minutes  out  of  my  book.  It's  a 
necessary  thing,  as  you  will  see.  Odd  as  it 
may  seem  to  you.  And  afterwards,  when  they 
are  falling  to  pieces,  I  try  and  persuade  them  of 
a  strange  world  in  which  I  scarcely  believe 
1  myself,  where  life  is  altogether  different  from 
jwhat  they  have  had  —  or  desire.  And  in  the 
end,  I  bury  them,  and  read  out  of  my  book  to 
those  who  will  presently  follow  into  the  un- 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  81 

known  land.  I  stand  at  the  beginning,  and  at 
the  zenith,  and  at  the  setting  of  their  lives. 
And  on  every  seventh  day,  I  who  am  a  man 
myself,  I  who  see  no  further  than  they  do, 
talk  to  them  of  the  Life  to  Come  —  the  life  of 
which  we  know  nothing.  If  such  a  life  there 
be.  And  slowly  I  drop  to  pieces  amidst  my 
prophesying." 

"What  a  strange  life!"  said  the  Angel. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Vicar.  "What  a  strange  life! 
But  the  thing  that  makes  it  strange  to  me  is 
new.  I  had  taken  it  as  a  matter  of  course 
until  you  came  into  my  life. 

"This  life  of  ours  is  so  insistent,"  said  the 
Vicar.  "It,  and  its  petty  needs,  its  tempo- 
rary pleasures  (Crack)  swathe  our  souls  about. 
While  I  am  preaching  to  these  people  of  mine 
of  another  life,  some  are  ministering  to  one 
appetite  and  eating  sweets,  others  —  the  old 
men  —  are  slumbering,  the  youths  glance  at  the 
maidens,  the  grown  men  protrude  white  waist- 
coats and  gold  chains,  pomp  and  vanity  on  a 
substratum  of  carnal  substance,  their  wives 
flaunt  garish  bonnets  at  one  another.  And  I 
go  on  droning  away  of  the  things  unseen  and 


82  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

unrealised  —  'Eye  hath  not  seen/  I  read,  'nor 
ear  heard,  nor  hath  it  entered  into  the  imagina- 
tion of  man  to  conceive/  and  I  look  up  to  catch 
an  adult  male  immortal  admiring  the  fit  of  a 
pair  of  three  and  sixpenny  gloves.  It  is  damp- 
ing year  after  year.  When  I  was  ailing  in  my 
youth  I  felt  almost  the  assurance  of  vision  that 
beneath  this  temporary  phantasm  world  was  the 
real  world  —  the  enduring  world  of  the  Life 
Everlasting.  But  now " 

He  glanced  at  his  chubby  white  hand,  finger- 
ing the  stem  of  his  glass.  "I  have  put  on  flesh 
since  then,"  he  said.  \_Pause.~] 

"  I  have  changed  and  developed  very  much.  The 
battle  of  the  Flesh  and  Spirit  does  not  trouble  me 
as  it  did.  Every  day  I  feel  less  confidence  in  my 
beliefs,  and  more  in  God.  I  live,  I  am  afraid,  a 
quiescent  life,  duties  fairly  done,  a  little  orni- 
thology and  a  little  chess,  a  trifle  of  mathematical 
trifling.  My  times  are  in  His  hands " 

The  Vicar  sighed  and  became  pensive.  The 
Angel  watched  him,  and  the  Angel's  eyes  were 
troubled  with  the  puzzle  of  him.  "Gluck, 
gluck,  gluck,"  went  the  decanter  as  the  Vicar 
refilled  his  glass. 


AFTER  DINNEK  —  continued. 
XIX. 

So  the  Angel  dined  and  talked  to  the  Vicar, 
and  presently  the  night  came  and  he  was  over- 
taken by  yawning. 

"  Yah oh !  "  said  the  Angel  suddenly. 

"Dear  me!  A  higher  power  seemed  suddenly 
to  stretch  my  mouth  open  and  a  great  breath  of 
air  went  rushing  down  my  throat." 

"You  yawned,"  said  the  Vicar.  "Do  you 
never  yawn  in  the  angelic  country?" 

"Never,"  said  the  Angel. 

"And  yet  you  are  immortal! 1  suppose 

you  want  to  go  to  bed." 

"Bed!"  said  the  Angel.     "Where's  that?" 

So  the  Vicar  explained  darkness  to  him  and 
the  art  of  going  to  bed.  (The  Angels,  it  seems, 
sleep  only  in  order  to  dream,  and  dream  like 
primitive  man  with  their  foreheads  on  their 
knees.  And  they  sleep  among  the  white  poppy 


84  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

meadows  in  the  heat  of  the  day.)  The  Angel 
found  the  bedroom  arrangements  quaint  enough. 

"Why  is  everything  raised  up  on  big  wooden 
legs?"  he  said.  "You  have  the  floor,  and  then 
you  put  everything  you  have  upon  a  wooden 
quadruped.  Why  do  you  do  it?"  The  Vicar 
explained  with  philosophical  vagueness.  The 
Angel  burnt  his  finger  in  the  candle-flame  — 
and  displayed  an  absolute  ignorance  of  the 
elementary  principles  of  combustion.  He  was 
merely  charmed  when  a  line  of  fire  ran  up  the 
curtains.  The  Vicar  had  to  deliver  a  lecture  on 
fire  so  soon  as  the  line  was  extinguished.  He 
had  all  kinds  of  explanations  to  make  —  even 
the  soap  needed  explaining.  It  was  an  hour  or 
more  before  the  Angel  was  safely  tucked  in  for 
the  night. 

"He's  very  beautiful,"  said  the  Vicar,  de- 
scending the  staircase,  quite  tired  out;  "and 
he's  a  real  Angel  no  doubt.  But  I  am  afraid 
he  will  be  a  dreadful  anxiety,  all  the  same,  be- 
fore he  gets  into  our  earthly  way  with  things." 

He  seemed  quite  worried.  He  helped  himself 
to  an  extra  glass  of  sherry  before  he  put  away 
the  wine  in  the  cellaret. 


AFTER  DINNER  —  continued. 
XX. 

THE  Curate  stood  in  front  of  the  looking-glass 
and  solemnly  divested  himself  of  his  collar. 

"I  never  heard  a  more  fantastic  story,"  said 
Mrs.  Mendham  from  the  basket  chair.  "The 
man  must  be  mad.  Are  you  sure " 

"Perfectly,  my  dear.  I've  told  you  every 
word,  every  incident " 

"  Well!"  said  Mrs.  Mendham,  and  spread  her 
hands.  "There's  no  sense  in  it." 

"Precisely,  my  dear." 

"The  Vicar,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham,  "must  be 
mad." 

"This  hunchback  is  certainly  one  of  the 
strangest  creatures  I've  seen  for  a  long  time. 
Foreign  looking,  with  a  big  bright-coloured  face 
and  long  brown  hair.  ...  It  can't  have  been 
cut  for  months!"  The  Curate  put  his  studs 

85 


86  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

carefully  upon  the  shelf  of  the  dressing-table. 
"And  a  kind  of  staring  look  about  his  eyes, 
and  a  simpering  smile.  Quite  a  silly  looking 
person.  Effeminate." 

"But  who  can  he  be?"  said  Mrs.  Mendham. 

"I  can't  imagine,  my  dear.  Nor  where  he 
came  from.  He  might  be  a  chorister  or  some- 
thing of  that  sort." 

"But  why  should  he  be  about  the  shrubbery 
.  .'  .  in  that  dreadful  costume?" 

"I  don't  know.  The  Vicar  gave  me  no 
explanation.  He  simply  said,  'Mendham,  this 
is  an  Angel. ' ' 

"  I  wonder  if  he  drinks.  .  .  .  They  may  have 
been  bathing  near  the  spring,  of  course,"  re- 
flected Mrs.  Mendham.  "But  I  noticed  no 
other  clothes  on  his  arm." 

The  Curate  sat  down  on  his  bed  and  unlaced 
his  boots. 

"It's  a  perfect  mystery  to  me,  my  dear." 
(Flick,  flick  of  laces.)  "Hallucination  is  the 
only  charitable " 

"You  are  sure,  George,  that  it  was  not  a 
woman." 

"Perfectly,'5  said  the  Curate. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  87 

"I  know  what  men  are,   of  course." 

"It  was  a  young  man  of  nineteen  or  twenty," 
said  the  Curate. 

"I  can't  understand  it,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham. 
"  You  say  the  creature  is  staying  at  the  Vicar- 
age?" 

"Hilyer  is  simply  mad,"  said  the  Curate. 
He  got  up  and  went  padding  round  the  room  to 
the  door  to  put  out  his  boots.  "To  judge  by 
his  manner  you  would  really  think  he  believed 
this  cripple  was  an  Angel."  ("Are  your  shoes 
out,  dear?") 

("They're  just  by  the  wardrobe"),  said  Mrs. 
Mendham.  "  He  always  was  a  little  queer,  you 
know.  There  was  always  something  childish 
about  him.  .  .  .  An  Angel ! " 

The  Curate  came  and  stood  by  the  fire,  fum* 
bling  with  his  braces.  Mrs.  Mendham  liked  a 
fire  even  in  the  summer.  "He  shirks  all  the 
serious  problems  in  life  and  is  always  trifling 
with  some  new  foolishness,"  said  the  Curate. 
"  Angel  indeed !  "  He  laughed  suddenly.  "  Hil- 
yer must  be  mad,"  he  said. 

Mrs.  Mendham  laughed  too.  "Even  that 
doesn't  explain  the  hunchback,"  she  said. 


88  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"The  hunchback  must  be  mad  too,'*  said  the 
Curate. 

"It's  the  only  way  of  explaining  it  in  a 
sensible  way,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham.  [Pause.~\ 

"Angel  or  no  Angel,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham, 
"I  know  what  is  due  to  me.  Even  supposing 
the  man  thought  he  was  in  the  company  of  an 
Angel,  that  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  be- 
have like  a  gentleman." 

"That  is  perfectly  true." 

"You  will  write  to  the  Bishop,  of  course?" 

Mendham  coughed.  "No,  I  shan't  write  to 
the  Bishop,"  said  Mendham.  "I  think  it  seems 
a  little  disloyal.  .  .  .  And  he  took  no  notice 
of  the  last,  you  know." 

"But  surely " 

"I  shall  write  to  Austin.  In  confidence.  He 
will  be  sure  to  tell  the  Bishop,  you  know.  And 
you  must  remember,  my  dear " 

"That  Hilyer  can  dismiss  you,  you  were 
going  to  say.  My  dear,  the  man's  much  too 
weak !  /  should  have  a  word  to  say  about  that. 
And  besides,  you  do  all  his  work  for  him. 
Practically,  we  manage  the  parish  from  end  to 
end.  I  do  not  know  what  would  become  of  the 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  89 

poor  if  it  was   not  for  me.     They'd  have   free 
quarters  in  the  Vicarage  to-morrow.     There  is 

that  Goody  Ansell " 

"I  know,  my  dear,"  said  the  Curate,  turning 
away  and  proceeding  with  his  undressing. 
"You  were  telling  me  about  her  only  this 
afternoon." 


AFTER  DINNER  —  continued. 
XXI. 

AND  thus  in  the  little  bedroom  over  the  gable 
we  reach  a  first  resting  place  in  this  story. 
And  as  we  have  been  hard  at  it,  getting  our 
story  spread  out  before  you,  it  may  be  perhaps 
well  to  recapitulate  a  little. 

Looking  back  you  will  see  that  much  has  been 
done;  we  began  with  a  blaze  of  light  "not  uni- 
form but  broken  all  over  by  curving  flashes  like 
the  waving  of  swords,"  and  the  sound  of  a 
mighty  harping,  and  the  advent  of  an  Angel 
with  polychromatic  wings. 

Swiftly,  dexterously,  as  the  reader  must  admit, 
wings  have  been  clipped,  halo  handled  off,  the 
glory  clapped  into  coat  and  trousers,  and  the 
Angel  made  for  all  practical  purposes  a  man, 
under  a  suspicion  of  being  either  a  lunatic  or  an 
impostor.  You  have  heard  too,  or  at  least  been 
able  to  judge,  what  the  Vicar  and  the  Doctor 

90 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  91 

and  the  Curate's  wife  thought  of  the  strange 
arrival.  And  further  remarkable  opinions  are 
to  follow. 

The  afterglow  of  the  summer  sunset  in  the 
northwest  darkens  into  night  and  the  Angel 
sleeps,  dreaming  himself  back  in  the  wonderful 
world  where  it  is  always  light,  and  everyone  is 
happy,  where  fire  does  not  burn  and  ice  does 
not  chill ;  where  rivulets  of  starlight  go  stream- 
ing through  the  amaranthine  meadows,  out  to 
the  seas  of  Peace.  He  dreams,  and  it  seems  to 
him  that  once  more  his  wings  glow  with  a 
thousand  colours  and  flash  through  the  crystal 
air  of  the  world  from  which  he  has  come. 

So  he  dreams.  But  the  Vicar  lies  awake,  too 
perplexed  for  dreaming.  Chiefly  he  is  troubled 
by  the  possibilities  of  Mrs.  Mendham,  but  the 
evening's  talk  has  opened  a  kind  of  window  in 
his  mind,  and  he  is  also  stimulated  by  a  sense 
as  of  something  seen  darkly  through  a  veiled 
window,  of  a  hitherto  unsuspected  wonderland 
lying  about  his  world.  For  twenty  years  now 
he  has  held  his  village  living  and  lived  his  daily 
life,  protected  by  his  familiar  creed,  by  the 
clamour  of  the  details  of  life,  from  any  mystical 


92  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

dreaming.  But  now  interweaving  with  the 
familiar  bother  of  his  persecuting  neighbour,  is 
an  altogether  unfamiliar  sense  of  strange  new 
things. 

There  was  something  ominous  in  the  feeling. 
Once,  indeed,  it  rose  above  all  other  considera- 
tions, and  in  a  kind  of  terror  he  blundered  out 
of  bed,  bruised  his  shins  very  convincingly, 
found  the  matches  at  last,  and  lit  a  candle  to 
assure  himself  of  the  reality  of  his  own  custom- 
ary world  again.  But  on  the  whole  the  more 
tangible  trouble  was  the  Mendham  avalanche. 
Her  tongue  seemed  to  be  hanging  above  him 
like  the  sword  of  Damocles.  What  might  she 
not  say  of  this  business,  before  her  indignant 
imagination  came  to  rest? 

And  while  the  successful  captor  of  the  Strange 
Bird  was  sleeping  thus  uneasily,  Gully  of  Sid- 
derton  was  carefully  unloading  his  gun  after  a 
wearisome  blank  day,  and  Sandy  Bright  was  on 
his  knees  in  prayer,  with  the  window  carefully 
fastened.  Annie  Durgan  was  sleeping  hard 
with  her  mouth  open,  and  Amory's  mother  was 
dreaming  of  washing,  and  both  of  them  had  long 
since  exhausted  the  topics  of  the  Sound  and  the 


THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT.  93 

Glare.  Lumpy  Durgan  was  sitting  up  in  his 
bed,  now  crooning  the  fragment  of  a  tune  and 
now  listening  intently  for  a  sound  he  had  heard 
once  and  longed  to  hear  again.  As  for  the 
solicitor's  clerk  at  Iping  Hanger,  he  was  trying 
to  write  poetry  about  a  confectioner's  girl  at 
Portburdock,  and  the  Strange  Bird  was  quite 
out  of  his  head.  But  the  ploughman  who  had 
seen  it  on  the  confines  of  Siddermorton  Park 
had  a  black  eye.  That  had  been  one  of  the 
more  tangible  consequences  of  a  little  argument 
about  birds'  legs  in  the  "Ship."  It  is  worthy  of 
this  passing  mention,  since  it  is  probably  the 
only  known  instance  of  an  Angel  causing  any- 
thing of  the  kind. 


MORNING. 
XXII. 

THE  Vicar  going  to  call  the  Angel,  found  him 
dressed  and  leaning  out  of  his  window.  It  was  a 
glorious  morning,  still  dewy,  and  the  rising  sun- 
light slanting  round  the  corner  of  the  house 
struck  warm  and  yellow  upon  the  hillside.  The 
birds  were  astir  in  the  hedges  and  shrubbery. 
Up  the  hillside — for  it  was  late  in  August  —  a 
plough  drove  slowly.  The  Angel's  chin  rested 
upon  his  hands  and  he  did  not  turn  as  the  Vicar 
came  up  to  him. 

"  How's  the  wing  ?  "  said  the  Vicar. 

« I'd  forgotten  it,"  said  the  Angel.  "  Is  that 
yonder  a  man  ?  " 

The  Vicar  looked.     "  That's  a  ploughman." 

"  Why  does  he  go  to  and  fro  like  that  ?  Does 
it  amuse  him  ?  " 

"  He's  ploughing.     That's  his  work." 

"Work!  Why  does  he  do  it?  It  seems  a 
monotonous  thing  to  do." 

94 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  95 

"  It  is,"  admitted  the  Vicar.  "  But  he  has  to 
do  it  to  get  a  living,  you  know.  To  get  food  to 
eat  and  all  that  kind  of  thing." 

"  How  curious ! "  said  the  Angel.  "  Do  all  men 
have  to  do  that  ?  Do  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no.     He  does  it  for  me ;  does  my  share." 

"  Why  ?  "  asked  the  Angel. 

"Oh!  in  return  for  things  I  do  for  him,  you 
know.  We  go  in  for  division  of  labour  in  this 
world.  Exchange  is  no  robbery." 

"  I  see,"  said  the  Angel,  with  his  eyes  still  on 
the  ploughman's  heavy  movements. 

"  What  do  you  do  for  him  ?  " 

"  That  seems  an  easy  question  to  you,"  said  the 
Vicar,  "  but  really  !  —  it's  difficult.  Our  social 
arrangements  are  rather  complicated.  It's  impos- 
sible to  explain  these  things  all  at  once,  before 
breakfast.  Don't  you  feel  hungry  ?  " 

"I  think  I  do,"  said  the  Angel  slowly,  still 
at  the  window ;  and  then  abruptly,  "  Somehow  I 
can't  help  thinking  that  ploughing  must  be  far 
from  enjoyable." 

"Possibly,"  said  the  Vicar,  "very  possibly. 
But  breakfast  is  ready.  Won't  you  come 
down  ?  " 


96  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

The  Angel  left  the  window  reluctantly. 

"  Our  society,"  explains  the  Vicar  on  the  stair- 
case, "  is  a  complicated  organisation." 

"Yes?" 

"  And  it  is  so  arranged  that  some  do  one  thing 
and  some  another." 

"And  that  lean,  bent  old  man  trudges  after 
that  heavy  blade  of  iron  pulled  by  a  couple  of 
horses  while  we  go  down  to  eat  ?  " 

"  Yes.  You  will  find  it  is  perfectly  just.  Ah ! 
mushrooms  and  poached  eggs !  It's  the  Social 
System.  Pray'  be  seated.  Possibly  it  strikes  you 
as  unfair." 

"  I'm  puzzled,"  said  the  Angel. 

"  The  drink  I'm  sending  you  is  called  coffee," 
said  the  Vicar.  "  I  daresay  you  are.  When  I 
was  a  young  man  I  was  puzzled  in  the  same  way. 
But  afterwards  comes  a  Broader  View  of  Things. 
(These  black  things  are  called  mushrooms ;  they 
look  beautiful.)  Other  Considerations.  Do  you 
know,  instead  of  explaining  this  matter  now 
(this  is  yours),  I  think  I  will  lend  you  a  little 
book  to  read  (Chum,  chum,  chum),  these  mush- 
rooms are  well  up  to  their  appearance,  which  sets 
the  whole  thing  out  very  clearly." 


THE  VIOLIN. 
XXIII. 

AFTER  breakfast  the  Vicar  went  into  the 
little  room  next  his  study  to  find  a  book  on 
Political  Economy  for  the  Angel  to  read.  For 
the  Angel's  social  ignorances  were  clearly 
beyond  any  verbal  explanations.  The  door 
stood  ajar. 

"  What  is  that  ? "  said  the  Angel,  following 
him.  "  A  violin !  "  He  took  it  down. 

"  You  play  ?  "  said  the  Vicar. 

The  Angel  had  the  bow  in  his  hand,  and  by 
way  of  answer  drove  it  across  the  strings.  The 
quality  of  the  note  made  the  Vicar  turn 
suddenly. 

The  Angel's  hand  tightened  on  the  instru- 
ment. The  bow  flew  back  and  flickered,  and 
an  air  the  Vicar  had  never  heard  before  danced 
in  his  ears.  The  Angel  shifted  the  fiddle  under 
his  dainty  chin  and  went  on  playing,  and  as 
H  97 


98  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

he  played  his  eyes  grew  bright  and  his  lips 
smiled.  At  first  he  looked  at  the  Vicar,  then 
his  expression  became  abstracted.  He  seemed 
no  longer  to  look  at  the  Vicar,  but  through 
him,  at  something  beyond,  something  in  his 
memory  or  his  imagination,  something  infinitely 
remote,  undreamt  of  hitherto  .  .  . 

The  Vicar  tried  to  follow  the  music.  The 
air  reminded  him  of  a  flame,  it  rushed  up, 
shone,  flickered  and  danced,  passed  and  reap- 
peared. No!  — it  did  not  reappear!  Another 
air  —  like  it  and  unlike  it,  shot  up  after  it, 
wavered,  vanished.  Then  another,  the  same  and 
not  the  same.  It  reminded  him  of  the  flaring 
tongues  that  palpitate  and  change  above  a  newly 
lit  fire.  There  are  two  airs  —  or  motifs,  which 
is  it?  —  thought  the  Vicar.  He  knew  remark- 
ably little  of  musical  technique.  They  go 
dancing  up,  one  pursuing  the  other,  out  of  the 
fire  of  the  incantation,  pursuing,  fluctuating, 
turning,  up  into  the  sky.  There  below  was  the 
fire  burning,  a  flame  without  fuel  upon  a  level 
space,  and  there  two  flirting  butterflies  of  sound, 
dancing  away  from  it,  up,  one  over  another, 
swift,  abrupt,  uncertain. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  99 

"  Flirting  butterflies  were  they ! "  What  was 
the  Vicar  thinking  of  ?  Where  was  he  ?  In 
the  little  room  next  to  his  study,  of  course ! 
And  the  Angel  standing  in  front  of  him  smiling 
into  his  face,  playing  the  violin,  and  looking 
through  him  as  though  he  was  only  a  window 

That  motif  again,  a  yellow  flare,  spread 

fanlike  by  a  gust,  and  now  one,  then  with  a  swift 
eddying  upward  flight  the  other,  the  two  things 
of  fire  and  light  pursuing  one  another  again  up 
into  that  clear  immensity. 

The  study  and  the  realities  of  life  suddenly 
faded  out  of  the  Vicar's  eyes,  grew  thinner  and 
thinner  like  a  mist  that  dissolves  into  air,  and 
he  and  the  Angel  stood  together  on  a  pinnacle 
of  wrought  music,  about  which  glittering  melo- 
dies circled,  and  vanished,  and  reappeared.  He 
was  in  the  land  of  Beauty,  and  once  more 
the  glory  of  heaven  was  upon  the  Angel's  face, 
and  the  glowing  delights  of  colour  pulsated  in 
his  wings.  Himself  the  Vicar  could  not  see. 
But  I  cannot  tell  you  of  the  vision  of  that 
great  and  spacious  land,  of  its  incredible  open- 
ness, and  height,  and  nobility.  For  there  is  no 
space  there  like  ours,  no  time  as  we  know  it ; 


100  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

one  must  needs  speak  by  burgling  metaphors 
and  own  in  bitterness  after  all  that  one  has 
failed.  And  it  was  only  a  vision.  The  wonder- 
ful creatures  flying  through  the  sether  saw  them 
not  as  they  stood  there,  flew  through  them  as 
one  might  pass  through  a  whisp  of  mist.  The 
Vicar  lost  all  sense  of  duration,  all  sense  of 
necessity 

"  Ah  !  "  said  the  Angel,  suddenly  putting  down 
the  fiddle. 

The  Vicar  had  forgotten  the  book  on  Political 
Economy,  had  forgotten  everything  until  the 
Angel  had  done.  For  a  minute  he  sat  quite 
still.  Then  he  woke  up  with  a  start.  He  was 
sitting  on  the  old  iron-bound  chest. 

"  Really,"  he  said  slowly,  "  you  are  very 
clever." 

He  looked  about  him  in  a  puzzled  way.  "I 
had  a  kind  of  vision  while  you  were  playing. 

I  seemed  to  see What  did  I  see?  It  has 

gone." 

He  stood  up  with  a  dazzled  expression  upon 
his  face.  "I  shall  never  play  the  violin  again," 
he  said.  "I  wish  you  would  take  it  to  your 
room  —  and  keep  it And  play  to  me 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  101 

again.  I  did  not  know  anything  of  music  until 
I  heard  you  play.  I  do  not  feel  as  though  I 
had  ever  heard  any  music  before." 

He  stared  at  the  Angel,  then  about  him  at  the 
room.  "  I  have  never  felt  anything  of  this  kind 
with  music  before,"  he  said.  He  shook  his  head. 
"  I  shall  never  play  again." 


THE  ANGEL  EXPLOKES  THE  VILLAGE. 
XXIV. 

VERY  unwisely,  as  I  think,  the  Vicar  allowed 
the  Angel  to  go  down  into  the  village  by  himself, 
to  enlarge  his  ideas  of  humanity.  Unwisely, 
because  how  was  he  to  imagine  the  reception  the 
Angel  would  receive?  Not  thoughtlessly,  I  am 
afraid.  He  had  always  carried  himself  with 
decorum  in  the  village,  and  the  idea  of  a  slow 
procession  through  the  main  street  with  all  the 
inevitable  curious  remarks,  explanations,  point- 
ings, was  too  much  for  him.  The  Angel  might 
do  the  strangest  things,  the  village  was  certain 
to  think  them.  Peering  faces.  "  Who's  he  got 
now?".  Besides,  was  it  not  his  duty  to  prepare 
his  sermon  in  good  time?  The  Angel,  duly  di- 
rected, went  down  cheerfully  by  himself  —  still 
innocent  of  most  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  human 
as  distinguished  from  the  angelic  turn  of  mind. 

The  Angel    walked   slowly,   his    white   hands 

102 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  103 

folded  behind  his  hunched  back,  his  sweet  face 
looking  this  way  and  that.  He  peered  curiously 
into  the  eyes  of  the  people  he  met.  A  little  child 
picking  a  bunch  of  vetch  and  honeysuckle  looked 
in  his  face,  and  forthwith  came  and  put  them  in  his 
hand.  It  was  about  the  only  kindness  he  had 
from  a  human  being  (saving  only  the  Vicar  and 
one  other).  He  heard  Mother  Gustick  scolding 
that  granddaughter  of  hers  as  he  passed  the  door. 
"  You  Brazen  Faggit  —  you ! "  said  Mother  Gus- 
tick. "  You  Trumpery  Baggage  !  " 

The  Angel  stopped,  startled  at  the  strange 
sounds  of  Mother  Gustick's  voice.  "Put  yer 
best  clo'es  on,  and  yer  feather  in  yer  'at,  and  off 
you  goes  to  meet  en,  fal  lal,  and  me  at  'ome 
slaving  for  ye.  'Tis  a  Fancy  Lady  you'll  be 
wantin'  to  be,  my  gal,  a  walkin'  Touch  and  Go, 
with  yer  idleness  and  finery " 

The  voice  ceased  abruptly,  and  a  great  peace 
came  upon  the  battered  air.  "Most  grotesque 
and  strange ! "  said  the  Angel,  still  surveying 
this  wonderful  box  of  discords.  "  Walking  Touch 
and  Go  I "  He  did  not  know  that  Mrs.  Gustick 
had  suddenly  become  aware  of  his  existence, 
and  was  scrutinising  his  appearance  through  the 


104  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

window-blind.  Abruptly  the  door  flew  open,  and 
she  stared  out  into  the  Angel's  face.  A  strange 
apparition,  grey  and  dusty  hair,  and  the  dirty 
pink  dress  unhooked  to  show  the  stringy  throat, 
a  discoloured  gargoyle,  presently  to  begin  spout- 
ing incomprehensible  abuse. 

"Now,  then,  Mister,"  began  Mrs.  Gustick. 
"Have  ye  nothin'  better  to  do  than  listen  at 
people's  doors  for  what  you  can  pick  up?" 

The  Angel  stared  at  her  in  astonishment. 

"  D'year ! "  said  Mrs.  Gustick,  evidently  very 
angry  indeed.  "  Listening" 

"  Have  you  any  objection  to  my  hearing  .  .  ." 

"  Object  to  my  hearing !  Course  I  have ! 
Whad  yer  think  ?  You  ain't  such  a  Ninny  .  .  ." 

"  But  if  ye  didn't  want  me  to  hear,  why  did 
you  cry  out  so  loud?  I  thought  .  .  ." 

"  You  thought !  Softie  '• —  that's  what  you  are ! 
You  silly  girt  staring  Gaby,  what  don't  know  any 
better  than  to  come  holding  yer  girt  mouth  wide 
open  for  all  that  you  can  catch  holt  on?  And 
then  off  up  there  to  tell !  You  great  Fat-Faced, 
Tale-Bearin'  Silly-Billy!  I'd  be  ashamed  to 
come  poking  and  peering  round  quiet  people's 
houses  .  .  ." 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  105 

The  Angel  was  surprised  to  find  that  some  inex- 
plicable quality  in  her  voice  excited  the  most  dis- 
agreeable sensations  in  him  and  a  strong  desire  to 
withdraw.  But,  resisting  this,  he  stood  listening 
politely  (as  the  custom  is  in  the  Angelic  Land,  so 
long  as  anyone  is  speaking).  The  entire  eruption 
was  beyond  his  comprehension.  He  could  not  per- 
ceive any  reason  for  the  sudden  projection  of  this 
vituperative  head,  out  of  infinity,  so  to  speak. 
And  questions  without  a  break  for  an  answer  were 
outside  his  experience  altogether. 

Mrs.  Gustick  proceeded  with  her  characteristic 
fluency,  assured  him  he  was  no  gentleman,  en- 
quired if  he  called  himself  one,  remarked  that 
every  tramp  did  as  much  nowadays,  compared 
him  to  a  Stuck  Pig,  marvelled  at  his  impudence* 
asked  him  if  he  wasn't  ashamed  of  himself  stand- 
ing there,  enquired  if  he  was  rooted  to  the  ground, 
was  curious  to  be  told  what  he  meant  by  it,  wanted 
to  know  whether  he  robbed  a  scarecrow  for  his 
clothes,  suggested  that  an  abnormal  vanity 
prompted  his  behaviour,  enquired  if  his  mother 
knew  he  was  out,  and  finally  remarking,  "  I  got 
somethin'll  move  you,  my  gentleman,"  disappeared 
with  a  ferocious  slamming  of  the  door. 


106  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

The  interval  struck  the  Angel  as  singularly 
peaceful.  His  whirling  mind  had  time  to  analyse 
his  sensations.  He  ceased  bowing  and  smiling, 
and  stood  merely  astonished. 

"This  is  a  curious  painful  feeling,"  said  the 
Angel.  "  Almost  worse  than  Hungry,  and  quite 
-different.  When  one  is  hungry  one  wants  to  eat. 
I  suppose  she  was  a  woman.  Here  one  wants  to 
get  away.  I  suppose  I  might  just  as  well  go." 

He  turned  slowly  and  went  down  the  road 
meditating.  He  heard  the  cottage  door  reopen, 
and  turning  his  head,  saw  through  intervening 
scarlet  runners  Mrs.  Gustick  with  a  steaming 
saucepan  full  of  boiling  cabbage  water  in  her  hand. 

"'Tis  well  you  went,  Mister  Stolen  Breeches," 
•came  the  voice  of  Mrs.  Gustick  floating  down 
through  the  vermilion  blossoms.  "Don't  you 
come  peeping  and  prying  round  this  yer  cottage 
again  or  I'll  learn  ye  manners,  I  will ! " 

The  Angel  stood  in  a  state  of  considerable 
perplexity.  He  had  no  desire  to  come  within 
earshot  of  the  cottage  again  —  ever.  He  did  not 
understand  the  precise  import  of  the  black  pot, 
but  his  general  impression  was  entirely  disagree- 
able. There  was  no  explaining  it. 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 


10T 


"  I  mean  it ! "  said  Mrs.  Gustick,  crescendo. 
"Drat  it!  —  I  mean  it." 

The  Angel  turned  and  went  on,  a  dazzled  look 
in  his  eyes. 

"  She  was  very  grotesque ! "  said  the  AngeL 
"  Very.  Much  more  than  the  little  man  in  black. 

And  she  means  it But  what  she  means  I 

don't  know!  .  .  ."  He  became  silent.  "I  sup- 
pose they  all  mean  something,"  he  said,  presently, 
still  perplexed. 


THE  ANGEL  EXPLORES  THE  VILLAGE — continued. 
XXV. 

THEN  the  Angel  came  in  sight  of  the  forge, 
where  Sandy  Bright's  brother  was  shoeing  a  horse 
for  the  carter  from  Upmorton.  Two  hobbledehoys 
were  standing  by  the  forge  staring  in  a  bovine 
way  at  the  proceedings.  As  the  Angel  ap- 
proached these  two  and  then  the  carter  turned 
slowly  through  an  angle  of  thirty  degrees  and 
watched  his  approach,  staring  quietly  and  steadily 
at  him.  The  expression  on  their  faces  was  one 
of  abstract  interest. 

The  Angel  became  self-conscious  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life.  He  drew  nearer,  trying  to  main- 
tain an  amiable  expression  on  his  face,  an  expres- 
sion that  beat  in  vain  against  their  granitic  stare. 
His  hands  were  behind  him.  He  smiled  pleas- 
antly, looking  curiously  at  the  (to  him)  incom- 
prehensible employment  of  the  smith.  But  the 
battery  of  eyes  seemed  to  angle  for  his  regard. 

108 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  109 

Trying  to  meet  the  three  pairs  at  once,  the  Angel 
lost  his  alertness  and  stumbled  over  a  stone.  One 
of  the  yokels  gave  a  sarcastic  cough,  and  was 
immediately  covered  witlr  confusion  at  the  Angel's 
enquiring  gaze,  nudging  his  companion  with  his 
elbow  to  cover  his  disorder.  None  spoke,  and 
the  Angel  did  not  speak. 

So  soon  as  the  Angel  had  passed,  one  of  the 
three  hummed  this  tune  ill   an   aggressive   tone. 


Then  all  three  of  them  laughed.  One  tried  to 
sing  something  and  found  his  throat  contained 
phlegm.  The  Angel  proceeded  on  his  way. 

"  Who's  'e  then  ?  "  said  the  second  hobbledehoy. 

"Ping,  ping,  ping,"  went  the  blacksmith's 
hammer. 

"  Spose  he's  one  of  these  here  foweners,"  said 
the  carter  from  Upmorton.  "  Daamned  silly  fool 
he  do  look  to  be  sure." 

"  Tas  the  way  with  them  foweners,"  said  the 
first  hobbledehoy  sagely. 

"  Got  something  very  like  the  'ump,"  said  the 
carter  from  Upmorton.  "  Daa-a-amned  if  'e  ent." 


110  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

Then  the  silence  healed  again,  and  they  re- 
sumed their  quiet  expressionless  consideration 
of  the  Angel's  retreating  figure. 

"Very  like  the  'ump  et  is,"  said  the  carter 
after  an  enormous  pause. 


THE  ANGEL  EXPLORES  THE  VILLAGE  —  continued. 
XXVI. 

THE  Angel  went  on  through  the  village,  find- 
ing it  all  wonderful  enough.  Once  he  heard 
some  invisible  mouth  chant  inaudible  words  to 
the  tune  the  man  at  the  forge  had  hummede 
"  They  begin,  and  just  a  little  while  and  then 
they  end,"  he  said  to  himself  in  a  puzzled  voice. 
"  But  what  are  they  doing  meanwhile  ? " 

"  That's  the  poor  creature  the  Vicar  shot  with 
that  great  gun  of  his,"  said  Sarah  Glue  (of  1, 
Church  Cottages),  peering  over  the  blind. 

"  He  looks  Frenchified,"  said  Susan  Hopper, 
peering  through  the  interstices  of  that  convenient 
veil  on  curiosity. 

"  He  has  sweet  eyes,"  said  Sarah  Glue,  who 
had  met  them  for  a  moment. 

The  Angel  sauntered  on.  The  postman  passed 
him  and  touched  his  hat  to  him;  further  down 

ill 


112  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

was  a  dog  asleep  in  the  sun.  He  went  on  and 
saw  Mendham,  who  nodded  distantly  and  hurried 
past.  (The  Curate  did  not  care  to  be  seen  talk- 
ing to  an  Angel  in  the  village,  until  more  was 
known  about  him.)  There  came  from  one  of 
the  houses  the  sound  of  a  child  screaming  in  a 
passion,  that  brought  a  puzzled  look  to  the 
Angelic  face.  Then  the  Angel  reached  the 
bridge  below  the  last  of  the  houses,  and  stood 
leaning  over  the  parapet  watching  the  glittering 
little  cascade  from  the  mill. 

"  They  begin,  and  just  a  little  while,  and  then 
they  end,"  said  the  weir  from  the  mill.  The 
water  raced  under  the  bridge,  green  and  dark, 
and  streaked  with  foam. 

Beyond  the  mill  rose  the  square  tower  of  the 
church,  with  the  churchyard  behind  it,  a  spray 
of  tombstones  and  wooden  headboards  splashed 
up  the  hillside.  A  half  dozen  of  beech  trees 
framed  the  picture. 

Then  the  Angel  heard  a  shuffling  of  feet  and 
the  gride  of  wheels  behind  him,  and  turning  his 
head  saw  a  man  dressed  in  dirty  brown  rags  and 
a  felt  hat  grey  with  dust,  who  was  standing 
with  a  slight  swaying  motion  and  fixedly  re- 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  113 

garding  the  Angelic  back.  Beyond  him  was 
another  almost  equally  dirty,  pushing  a  knife 
grinder's  barrow  over  the  bridge. 

"  Mornin',"  said  the  first  person  smiling  weakly. 
"Goomorn'."  He  arrested  an  escaping  hiccough. 

The  Angel  stared  at  him.  He  had  never  seen- 
a  really  fatuous  smile  before.  "Who  are  you?" 
said  the  Angel. 

The  fatuous  smile  faded.  "  No  your  business 
whoaaam.  Wishergoornorn." 

"Carm  on,"  said  the  man  with  the  grindstone, 
passing  on  his  way. 

"  Wishergoomorn,"  said  the  dirty  man,  in  a 
tone  of  extreme  aggravation.  "Carncher  An- 
swerme  ?  " 

"  Carm  on  you  fool ! "  said  the  man  with  the 
grindstone  —  receding. 

"I  don't  understand,"  said  the  Angel. 

"  Donunderstan'.  Sim'l  enough.  Wishergoo- 
morn.  Willyanswerme  ?  Wontchr?  gemwisher- 
gem  goomorn.  Cusom  answer  goomorn.  No 
gem.  Haverteachyer." 

The  Angel  was  puzzled.  The  drunken  man 
stood  swaying  for  a  moment,  then  he  made  an 
unsteady  snatch  at  his  hat  and  threw  it  down  at 


114  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

the  Angel's  feet.  "Ver  well,"  he  said,  as  one 
who  decides  great  issues. 

"  Carm  on ! "  said  the  voice  of  the  man  with  the 
grindstone  —  stopping  perhaps  twenty  yards  off. 

"  You  wan  fight,  you "  the  Angel  failed  to 

catch  the  word.  "  111  show  yer,  not  answer  gem's 
goomorn." 

He  began  to  struggle  with  his  jacket.  "  Think 
I'm  drun,"  he  said,  "  I  show  yer."  The  man  with 
the  grindstone  sat  down  on  the  shaft  to  watch. 
"  Carm  on,"  he  said.  The  jacket  was  intricate, 
and  the  drunken  man  began  to  struggle  about 
the  road,  in  his  attempts  to  extricate  himself, 
breathing  threatenings  and  slaughter.  Slowly 
the  Angel  began  to  suspect  remotely  enough,  that 
these  demonstrations  were  hostile.  "Mur  wun 
know  yer  when  I  done  wi'  yer,"  said  the  drunken 
man,  coat  almost  over  his  head. 

At  last  the  garment  lay  on  the  ground,  and 
through  the  frequent  interstices  of  his  reminis- 
cences of  a  waistcoat,  the  drunken  tinker  displayed 
a  fine  hairy  and  muscular  body  to  the  Angel's  ob- 
servant eyes.  He  squared  up  in  masterly  fashion. 

"  Take  the  paint  off  yer,"  he  remarked,  advanc- 
ing and  receding,  fists  up  and  elbows  out. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  115 

"  Carm  on,"  floated  down  the  road. 

The  Angel's  attention  was  concentrated  on  two 
huge  hairy  black  fists,  that  swayed  and  advanced 
and  retreated.  "Come  on  d'yer  say?  I'll  show 
yer,"  said  the  gentleman  in  rags,  and  then  with 
extraordinary  ferocity :  "  My  crikey !  I'll  show 
yer." 

Suddenly  he  lurched  forward,  and  with  a  new- 
born instinct  and  raising  a  defensive  arm  as  he  did 
so,  the  Angel  stepped  aside  to  avoid  him.  The  fist 
missed  the  Angelic  shoulder  by  a  hairsbreadth, 
and  the  tinker  collapsed  in  a  heap  with  his  face 
against  the  parapet  of  the  bridge.  The  Angel 
hesitated  over  the  writhing  dusty  heap  of  blas- 
phemy for  a  moment,  and  then  turned  towards 
the  man's  companion  up  the  road.  "  Lemmeget 
up,"  said  the  man  on  the  bridge.  "  Lemmeget 
up,  you  swine.  I'll  show  yer." 

A  strange  disgust,  a  quivering  repulsion  came 
upon  the  Angel.  He  walked  slowly  away  from 
the  drunkard  towards  the  man  with  the  grind- 
stone. 

"What  does  it  all  mean?"  said  the  Angel. 
"I  don't  understand  it." 

"Dam  fool!  .  .  .  says  it's  'is  silver  weddin'," 


116  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

answered  the  man  with  the  grindstone,  evidently 
much  annoyed ;  and  then,  in  a  tone  of  growing- 
impatience,  he  called  down  the  road  once  more: 
"  Carm  on ! " 

"Silver  wedding!"  said  the  Angel.  "What  i& 
a  silver  wedding?" 

"Jest  'is  rot,"  said  the  man  on  the  barrow. 
"But  Vs  always  'avin's  some  'scuse  like  that. 
Fair  sickenin'  it  is.  Lars  week  it  wus  'is  bloomin' 
birthday,  and  then  'e  adn't  'ardly  got  sober  orf 
a  comlimentary  drunk  to  my  noo  barrer.  {Carm 
on,  you  fool.)  " 

"  But  I  don't  understand,"  said  the  AngeL 
"  Why  does  he  sway  about  so  ?  Why  does  he 
keep  on  trying  to  pick  up  his  hat  like  that  — 
and  missing  it?" 

"TJ%/"  said  the  tinker.  "Well  this  is  a 
blasted  innocent  country !  Why !  Because  'e's 
blind  !  Wot  else  ?  (Carm  on  —  Dam  yer.)  Be- 
cause Vs  just  as  full  as  'e  can  'old.  That's  why  !  " 

The  Angel  noticing  the  tone  of  the  second 
tinker's  voice,  judged  it  wiser  not  to  question 
him  further.  But  he  stood  by  the  grindstone 
and  continued  to  watch  the  mysterious  evolu- 
tions on  the  bridge. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  117 

"Carm  on!  I  shall  'ave  to  go  and  pick  up 
that  'at  I  suppose  .  .  .  'E's  always  at  it.  I  ne'er 
'ad  such  a  blooming  pard  before.  Always  at  it, 
'e  is." 

The  man  with  the  barrow  meditated.  "  'Tain't 
as  if  'e  was  a  gentleman  and  adn't  no  livin'  to 
get.  An'  e's  such  a  reckless  fool  when  'e  gets 
a  bit  on.  Goes  offerin'  out  everyone  'e  meets. 
(There  you  go!)  I'm  blessed  if  'e  didn't  offer 
out  a  'ole  bloomin'  Salvation  Army.  No  judg- 
ment in  it.  (Oh !  Carm  on !  Carm  on !)  'Ave 
to  go  and  pick  this  bloomin'  'at  up  now  I  s'pose. 
"*E  don't  care  wot  trouble  'e  gives." 

The  Angel  watched  the  second  tinker  walk 
back,  and,  with  affectionate  blasphemy,  assist  the 
first  to  his  hat  and  his  coat.  Then  he  turned, 
absolutely  mystified,  towards  the  village  again. 


THE  ANGEL  EXPLORES  THE  VILLAGE  —  continued, 
XXVII. 

AFTER  that  incident  the  Angel  walked  along 
past  the  mill  and  round  behind  the  church,  to 
examine  the  tombstones. 

"This  seems  to  be  the  place  where  they  put 
the  broken  pieces,"  said  the  Angel  —  reading  the 
inscriptions.  "  Curious  word  —  relict !  Kesurgam ! 
Then  they  are  not  done  with  quite.  What  a  huge 
pile  it  requires  to  keep  her  down !  .  .  .  It  is 
spirited  of  her." 

"  Hawkins  ?  "  said  the  Angel  softly,  .  .  .  "Haw- 
kins? The  name  is  strange  to  me.  .  .  .  He  did 
not  die  then.  ...  It  is  plain  enough,  —  Joined 
the  Angelic  Hosts,  May  17,  1863.  He  must 
have  felt  as  much  out  of  place  as  I  do  down 
here.  But  I  wonder  why  they  put  that  little  pot 
thing  on  the  top  of  this  monument.  Curious  I 

118 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  119 

There  are  several  others  about  —  little  stone  pots 
with  a  rag  of  stiff  stone  drapery  over  them." 

Just  then  the  boys  came  pouring  out  of  the 
National  School,  and  first  one  and  then  several 
stopped  agape  at  the  Angel's  crooked  black 
figure  among  the  white  tombs.  "Ent  'e  gart  a 
baak  on  en ! "  remarked  one  critic. 

"  'E's  got  'air  like  a  girl !  "  said  another. 

The  Angel  turned  towards  them.  He  was 
struck  by  the  queer  little  heads  sticking  up  over 
the  lichenous  wall.  He  smiled  faintly  at  their 
staring  faces,  and  then  turned  to  marvel  at  the 
iron  railings  that  enclosed  the  Fitz-Jarvis  tomb. 
"A  queer  air  of  uncertainty,"  he  said.  "Slabs, 
piles  of  stone,  these  railings.  .  .  .  Are  they 
afraid?  .  .  .  Do  these  Dead  ever  try  and  get 
up  again?  There's  an  air  of  repression  —  forti- 
fication   " 

"Ge*t  yer  'air  cut,  Ge*t  yer  'air  cut,"  sang  three 
little  boys  together. 

"  Curious  these  Human  Beings  are !  "  said  the 
Angel.  "  That  man  yesterday  wanted  to  cut  off 
my  wings,  now  these  little  creatures  want  me  to 
cut  off  my  hair !  They  will  leave  nothing  of  me 


120  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Where  did  you  get  that  'at?"  sang  another 
little  boy.  "Where  did  you  get  them  clo'es?" 

"  They  ask  questions  that  they  evidently  do  not 
want  answered,"  said  the  Angel.  "I  can  tell 
from  the  tone."  He  looked  thoughtfully  at  the 
little  boys.  "I  don't  understand  the  methods  of 
Human  intercourse.  These  are  probably  friendly 
advances,  a  kind  of  ritual.  But  I  don't  know  the 
responses.  I  think  I  will  go  back  to  the  little  fat 
man  in  black,  with  the  gold  chain  across  his 
stomach,  and  ask  him  to  explain.  It  is  difficult." 

He  turned  towards  the  lych  gate.  "  Oh!" 
said  one  of  the  little  boys,  in  a  shrill  falsetto, 
and  threw  a  beechnut  husk.  It  came  bounding 
across  the  churchyard  path.  The  Angel  stopped 
in  surprise. 

This  made  all  the  little  boys  laugh.     A  second 
imitating  the  first,  said  "  Oh  !  "  and  hit  the  Angel. 
His  astonishment  was  really  delicious.     They  all 
began    crying    "  Oh ! "    and    throwing    beechnut 
husks.     One  hit  the  Angel's  hand,  another  stung 
him  smartly  by  the  ear.     The  Angel  made  un 
gainly  movements  towards  them.     He  splutterec 
some   expostulation   and  made  for  the  roadway 
The  little  boys  were  amazed  and  shocked  at  his 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  121 

discomfiture  and  cowardice.  Such  sawney  be* 
haviour  could  not  be  encouraged.  The  pelting 
grew  vigorously.  You  may  perhaps  be  able  to 
imagine  those  vivid  moments,  daring  small  boys 
running  in  close  and  delivering  shots,  milder  small 
boys  rushing  round  behind  with  flying  discharges, 
Milton  Screever's  mongrel  dog  was  roused  to 
yelping  ecstacy  at  the  sight,  and  danced  (full  of 
wild  imaginings)  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  Angelic 
legs. 

"  Hi,  hi ! "  said  a  vigorous  voice.  "  I  never 
did!  Where's  Mr.  Jarvis?  Manners,  manners! 
you  young  rascals." 

The  youngsters  scattered  right  and  left,  some 
over  the  wall  into  the  playground,  some  down  the 
street. 

"  Frightful  pest  these  boys  are  getting ! "  said 
Crump,  coming  up.  "I'm  sorry  they  have  been 
annoying  you." 

The  Angel  seemed  quite  upset.  "  I  don't  under- 
stand," he  said.  "  These  Human  ways  .  .  ." 

"  Yes,  of  course.  Unusual  to  you.  How's 
your  excrescence?" 

"My  what?"  said  the  Angel. 

"Bifid  limb,  you  know.      How  is  it?     Now 


122  THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

you're  down  this  way,  come  in.  Come  in  and 
let  me  have  a  look  at  it  again.  You  young 
roughs !  And  meanwhile  these  little  louts  of  ours 
will  be  getting  off  home.  They're  all  alike  in 
these  villages.  Can't  understand  anything  abnor- 
mal. See  an  odd-looking  stranger.  Chuck  a 
stone.  No  imagination  beyond  the  parish.  .  .  . 
I'll  give  you  physic  if  I  catch  you  annoying 
strangers  again.  ...  I  suppose  it's  what  one 
might  expect.  .  .  .  Come  along  this  way." 

So  the  Angel,  horribly  perplexed  still,  was 
hurried  into  the  surgery  to  have  his  wound  re- 
dressed. 


LADY  HAMMEKGALLOW'S  VIEW. 
XXVIII. 

IN  Siddermorton  Park  is  Siddermorton  House, 
where  old  Lady  Hammergallow  lives,  chiefly 
upon  Burgundy  and  the  little  scandals  of  the 
village,  a  dear  old  lady  with  a  ropy  neck,  a 
ruddled  countenance  and  spasmodic  gusts  of  odd 
temper,  whose  three  remedies  for  all  human 
trouble  among  her  dependents  are,  a  bottle  of 
gin,  a  pair  of  charity  blankets,  or  a  new  crown 
piece.  The  House  is  a  mile-and-a-half  out  of 
Siddermorton.  Almost  all  the  village  is  hers, 
saving  a  fringe  to  the  south  which  belongs  to 
Sir  John  Gotch,  and  she  rules  it  with  an  auto- 
cratic rule,  refreshing  in  these  days  of  divided 
government.  She  orders  and  forbids  marriages, 
drives  objectionable  people  out  of  the  village  by 
the  simple  expedient  of  raising  their  rent,  dis- 
misses labourers,  obliges  heretics  to  go  to  church, 

123 


124  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

and  made  Susan  Dangett,  who  wanted  to  call  her 
little  girl  "  Euphemia,"  have  the  infant  christened 
"  Mary- Anne."  She  is  a  sturdy  Broad  Protestant 
and  disapproves  of  the  Vicar's  going  bald  like  a 
tonsure.  She  is  on  the  Village  Council,  which 
obsequiously  trudges  up  the  hill  and  over  the 
moor  to  her,  and  (as  she  is  a  trifle  deaf)  speaks 
all  its  speeches  into  her  speaking  trumpet  instead 
of  a  rostrum.  She  takes  no  interest  now  in 
politics,  but  until  last  year  she  was  an  active 
enemy  of  "that  Gladstone."  She  has  parlour 
maids  instead  of  footmen  to  do  her  waiting, 
because  of  Hockley,  the  American  stockbroker, 
and  his  four  Titans  in  plush. 

She  exercises  what  is  almost  a  fascination  upon 
the  village.  If  in  the  bar-parlour  of  the  Cat  and 
Cornucopia  you  swear  by  God  no  one  would  be 
shocked,  but  if  you  swore  by  Lady  Harnmer- 
gallow  they  would  probably  be  shocked  enough 
to  turn  you  out  of  the  room.  When  she  drives 
through  Siddermorton  she  always  calls  upon 
Bessy  Flump,  the  post-mistress,  to  hear  all  that 
has  happened,  and  then  upon  Miss  Finch,  the 
dressmaker,  to  check  back  Bessy  Flump.  Some- 
times she  calls  upon  the  Vicar,  sometimes  upon 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  125 

Mrs.  Mendham  whom  she  snubs,  and  even  some- 
times on  Crump.  Her  sparkling  pair  of  greys 
almost  ran  over  the  Angel  as  he  was  walking 
down  to  the  village. 

"So  that's  the  genius!"  said  Lady  Hammer- 
gallow,  and  turned  and  looked  at  him  through  the 
gilt  glasses  on  a  stick  that  she  always  carried  in 
her  shrivelled  and  shaky  hand.  "  Lunatic  indeed ! 
The  poor  creature  has  rather  a  pretty  face.  I'm 
sorry  I've  missed  him." 

But  she  went  on  to  the  vicarage  nevertheless, 
and  demanded  news  of  it  all.  The  conflicting 
accounts  of  Miss  Flump,  Miss  Finch,  Mrs.  Mend- 
ham,  Crump,  and  Mrs.  Jehoram  had  puzzled  her 
immensely.  The  Vicar,  hard  pressed,  did  all  he 
could  to  say  into  her  speaking  trumpet  what  had 
really  happened.  He  toned  down  the  wings  and 
the  saffron  robe.  But  he  felt  the  case  was  hope- 
less. He  spoke  of  his  prote*g6  as  "  Mr."  Angel.  He 
addressed  pathetic  asides  to  the  kingfisher.  The 
old  lady  noticed  his  confusion.  Her  queer  old 
head  went  jerking  backwards  and  forwards,  now 
the  speaking  trumpet  in  his  face  when  he  had 
nothing  to  say,  then  the  shrunken  eyes  peering  at 
him,  oblivious  of  the  explanation  that  was  coming 


126  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

from  his  lips.  A  great  many  Ohs !  and  Ahs  ! 
She  caught  some  fragments  certainly. 

"You  have  asked  him  to  stop  with  you  — 
indefinitely?"  said  Lady  Hammergallow  with  a 
Great  Idea  taking  shape  rapidly  in  her  mind. 

"  I  did  —  perhaps  inadvertently  —  make  such — " 

"  And  you  don't  know  where  he  comes  from  ?  " 

"Not  at  all." 

"  Nor  who  his  father  is,  I  suppose  ?  "  said  Lady 
Hammergallow  mysteriously. 

"  No,"  said  the  Vicar. 

"Now!"  said  Lady  Hammergallow  archly,  and 
keeping  her  glasses  to  her  eye,  she  suddenly  dug 
at  his  ribs  with  her  trumpet. 

"  My  dear  Lady  Hammergallow  ! " 

"I  thought  so.  Don't  think  I  would  blame 
you,  Mr.  Hilyer."  She  gave  a  corrupt  laugh  that 
she  delighted  in.  "  The  world  is  the  world,  and 
men  are  men.  And  the  poor  boy's  a  cripple,  eh  ? 
A  kind  of  judgment.  In  mourning,  I  noticed. 
It  reminds  me  of  the  Scarlet  Letter.  The 
mother's  dead,  I  suppose.  It's  just  as  well. 
Really  —  I'm  not  a  narrow  woman — I  respect 
you  for  having  him.  Really  I  do." 

"  But,  Lady  Hammergallow ! " 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  127 

"  Don't  spoil  everything  by  denying  it.  It  is  so 
very,  very  plain,  to  a  woman  of  the  world.  That 
Mrs.  Mendham  !  She  amuses  me  with  her  suspi- 
cions. Such  odd  ideas !  In  a  Curate's  wife.  But 
I  hope  it  didn't  happen  when  you  were  in  orders." 

"Lady  Hammergallow,  I  protest.  Upon  my 
word." 

"Mr.  Hilyer,  I  protest.  I  know.  Not  any- 
thing you  can  say  will  alter  my  opinion  one  jot. 
Don't  try.  I  never  suspected  you  were  nearly 
such  an  interesting  man." 

"But  this  suspicion  is  unendurable!" 

"We  will  help  him  together,  Mr.  Hilyer. 
You  may  rely  upon  me.  It  is  most  romantic." 
She  beamed  benevolence. 

"  But,  Lady  Hammergallow,  I  must  speak  ! " 

She  gripped  her  ear-trumpet  resolutely,  and 
held  it  before  her  and  shook  her  head. 

"  He  has  quite  a  genius  for  music,  Vicar,  so  I 
hear?" 

"  I  can  assure  you  most  solemnly  —  " 

"  I  thought  so.     And  being  a  cripple  —  " 

"You  are  under  a  most  cruel  —  " 

"  I  thought  that  if  his  gift  is  really  what  that 
Jehoram  woman  says." 


128  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"  An  unjustifiable  suspicion  that  ever  a  man  —  " 
("I   don't   think   much   on   her   judgment,   of 
course.") 

"Consider    my   position.     Have    I    gained    no 
character  ?  " 

"  It  might  be  possible  to  do  something  for  him 
as  a  performer." 

"  Have  I  —  (Bother  !    It's  no  good  /)  " 
44  And  so,  dear  Vicar,  I  propose  to  give  him  an 
opportunity  of  showing  us  what  he   can   do.     I 
have  been  thinking  it  all  over  as  I  drove  here. 
On  Tuesday  next,  I  will  invite  just  a  few  people 
of  taste,  and   he   shall   bring  his  violin.     Eigh? 
And  if  that  goes  well,  I  will  see  if  I  can  get  some 
introductions  and  really  push  him." 
"  But  Lady,  Lady  Hammergallow." 
"Not    another    word!"    said    Lady    Hammer- 
gallow,   still    resolutely    holding    her     speaking 
trumpet  before  her  and  clutching  her  eyeglasses. 
"  I  really  must  not  leave  those  horses.     Cutler  is 
so  annoyed  if  I  keep  them  too  long.     He  finds 
waiting    tedious,   poor    man,   unless    there    is    a 
public-house  near."     She  made  for  the  door. 
"Damn!"   said   the   Vicar,   under   his   breath. 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  129 

He  had  never  used  the  word  since  he  had  taken 
orders.  It  shows  you  how  an  Angel's  visit  may 
disorganise  a  man. 

He  stood  under  the  verandah  watching  the 
carriage  drive  away.  The  world  seemed  coming 
to  pieces  about  him.  Had  he  lived  a  virtuous 
celibate  life  for  thirty  odd  years  in  vain?  The 
things  of  which  these  people  thought  him  capable  ! 
He  stood  and  stared  at  the  green  cornfield 
opposite,  and  down  at  the  straggling  village.  It 
seemed  real  enough.  And  yet  for  the  first  time 
in  his  life  there  was  a  queer  doubt  of  its  reality. 
He  rubbed  his  chin,  then  turned  and  went  slowly 
upstairs  to  his  dressing-room,  and  sat  for  a  long 
time  staring  at  a  garment  of  some  yellow  text- 
ure. "Know  his  father!"  he  said.  "And  he  is 
immortal,  and  was  fluttering  about  his  heaven  when 
my  ancestors  were  marsupials.  ...  I  wish  he  was 
there  now." 

He  got  up  and  began  to  feel  the  robe. 

"  I  wonder  how  they  get  such  things,"  said  the 
Vicar.  Then  he  went  and  stared  out  of  the  win- 
dow. "I  suppose  everything  is  wonderful,  even 
the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun.  I  suppose 


130  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

there  is  no  adamantine  ground  for  any  belief. 
But  one  gets  into  a  regular  way  of  taking  things. 
This  disturbs  it.  I  seem  to  be  waking  up  to  the 
Invisible.  It  is  the  strangest  of  uncertainties. 
I  have  not  felt  so  stirred  and  unsettled  since  my 
adolescence." 


FURTHER  ADVENTURES  OF  THE  ANGEL  IN  THE 
VILLAGE. 

XXIX. 

"THAT'S  all  right,"  said  Crump  when  the 
bandaging  was  replaced.  "  It's  a  trick  of  mem- 
ory, no  doubt,  but  these  excrescences  of  yours 
don't  seem  nearly  so  large  as  they  did  yesterday. 
I  suppose  they  struck  me  rather  forcibly.  Stop 
and  have  lunch  with  me  now  you're  down  here. 
Midday  meal,  you  know.  The  youngsters  will 
be  swallowed  up  by  school  again  in  the  after- 
noon." 

"I  never  saw  anything  heal  so  well  in  my 
life,"  he  said,  as  they  walked  into  the  dining- 
room.  "Your  blood  and  flesh  must  be  as  clean 
and  free  from  bacteria  as  they  make  'em. 
Whatever  stuff  there  is  in  your  head, "  he  added 
sotto  voce. 

At  lunch  he  watched  the  Angel  narrowly,  and 
talked  to  draw  him  out. 

131 


132  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"  Journey  tire  you  yesterday  ?  "  he  said  suddenly. 

"  Journey !  "  said  the  Angel.  "  Oh !  my  wings 
felt  a  little  stiff." 

("Not  to  be  had/')  said  Crump  to  himself. 
("Suppose  I  must  enter  into  it.") 

"So  you  flew  all  the  way,  eigh?  No  convey- 
ance?" 

"There  wasn't  any  way,"  explained  the  Angel, 
taking  mustard.  "I  was  flying  up  a  symphony 
with  some  Griffins  and  Fiery  Cherubim,  and 
suddenly  everything  went  dark  and  I  was  in 
this  world  of  yours." 

"Dear  me!"  said  Crump.  "And  that's  why 
you  haven't  any  luggage."  He  drew  his  servi- 
ette across  his  mouth,  and  a  smile  flickered  in 
his  eyes. 

"  I  suppose  you  know  this  world  of  ours  pretty 
well?  Watching  us  over  the  adamantine  walls 
and  all  that  kind  of  thing.  Eigh?" 

"Not  very  well.  We  dream  of  it  sometimes. 
In  the  moonlight,  when  the  Nightmares  have 
fanned  us  to  sleep  with  their  wings." 

"Ah,  yes  —  of  course,"  said  Crump.  "Very 
poetical  way  of  putting  it.  Won't  you  take 
some  Burgundy?  It's  just  beside  you. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  133 

"There's  a  persuasion  in  this  world,  you 
know,  that  Angels'  Visits  are  by  no  means 
infrequent.  Perhaps  some  of  your  —  friends 
have  travelled?  They  are  supposed  to  come 
down  to  deserving  persons  in  prisons,  and  do 
refined  Nautches  and  that  kind  of  thing.  Faust 
business,  you  know." 

"I've  never  heard  of  anything  of  the  kind," 
said  the  Angel. 

"Only  the  other  day  a  lady  whose  baby  was 
my  patient  for  the  time  being  —  indigestion  — 
assured  me  that  certain  facial  contortions  the 
little  creature  made  indicated  that  it  was  Dream- 
ing of  Angels.  In  the  novels  of  Mrs.  Henry 
Wood  that  is  spoken  of  as  an  infallible  symptom 
of  an  early  departure.  I  suppose  you  can't 
throw  any  light  on  that  obscure  pathological 
manifestation  ?  " 

"I  don't  understand  it  at  all,"  said  the  Angel, 
puzzled,  and  not  clearly  apprehending  the  Doc- 
tor's drift. 

("Getting  huffy,")  said  Crump  to  himself. 
("Sees  I'm  poking  fun  at  him.") 

"There's  one  thing  I'm  curious  about.  Do 
the  new  arrivals  complain  much  about  their 


134  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

medical  attendants?  I've  always  fancied  there 
must  be  a  good  deal  of  hydropathic  talk  just  at 
first.  I  was  looking  at  that  picture  in  the 
Academy  only  this  June.  .  .  ." 

"New  Arrivals!"  said  the  Angel.  "I  really 
don't  follow  you." 

The  Doctor  stared.     "Don't  they  come?" 
"  Come !  "   said  the  Angel.     "  Who  ?  " 
'The  people  who  die  here." 
'After  they've  gone  to  pieces  here?" 
'That's  the  general  belief,  you  know." 
'  People,  like  the  woman  who  screamed  out  of 
the  door,  and  the  black -faced  man  and  his  volu- 
tations  and  the  horrible  little  things  that  threw 
husks !  —  certainly  not.     1  never  saw  such  creat- 
ures before  I  fell  into  this  world." 

"Oh!  but  come!"  said  the  Doctor.  "You'll 
tell  me  next  your  official  robes  are  not  white 
and  that  you  can't  play  the  harp." 

"There's  no  such  thing  as  white  in  the  An- 
gelic Land,"  said  the  Angel.  "It's  that  queer 
blank  colour  you  get  by  mixing  up  all  the 
others." 

"Why,  my  dear  Sir!"  said  the  Doctor,  sud- 
denly altering  his  tone,  "you  positively  know 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  135 

\ 

nothing  about  the  Land  you  come  from.  White's 
the  very  essence  of  it." 

The  Angel  stared  at  him.  Was  the  man  jest- 
ing? He  looked  perfectly  serious. 

"Look  here,"  said  Crump,  and  getting  up,  he 
went  to  the  sideboard  on  which  a  copy  of  the 
Parish  Magazine  was  lying.  He  brought  it 
round  to  the  Angel  and  opened  it  at  the  col- 
oured supplement.  "Here's  some  real  Angels," 
he  said.  "You  see  it's  not  simply  the  wings 
make  the  Angel.  White  you  see,  with  a  curly 
whisp  of  robe,  sailing  up  into  the  sky  with  their 
wings  furled.  Those  are  angels  on  the  best 
authority.  Hydroxyl  kind  of  hair.  One  has  a 
bit  of  a  harp,  you  see,  and  the  other  is  helping 
this  wingless  lady  —  kind  of  larval  Angel,  you 
know  —  upward. " 

"Oh!  but  really!"  said  the  Angel,  "those  are 
not  Angels  at  all." 

"But  they  are,"  said  Crump,  putting  the 
magazine  back  on  the  sideboard  and  resuming 
his  seat  with  an  air  of  intense  satisfaction.  "I 
can  assure  you  I  have  the  lest  authority.  .  .  ." 

"I  can  assure  you  ..." 

Crump   tucked   in   the   corners   of   his   mouth 


136  THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

and  shook  his  head  from  side  to  side  even  as 
he  had  done  to  the  Vicar.  "No  good,"  he  said, 
"can't  alter  our  ideas  just  because  an  irresponsi- 
ble visitor  ..." 

"If  these  are  Angels,"  said  the  Angel,  "then 
I  have  never  been  in  the  Angelic  Land." 

"Precisely,"  said  Crump,  ineffably  self-satis- 
fied; "that  was  just  what  I  was  getting  at." 

The  Angel  stared  at  him  for  a  minute  round 
eyed,  and  then  was  seized  for  the  second  time 
by  the  human  disorder  of  laughter. 

"Ha,  ha,  ha!"  said  Crump,  joining  in.  "I 
thought  you  were  not  quite  so  mad  as  you 
seemed.  Ha,  ha,  ha!" 

And  for  the  rest  of  the  lunch  they  were  both 
very  merry,  for  entirely  different  reasons,  and 
Crump  insisted  upon  treating  the  Angel  as  a 
"dorg"  of  the  highest  degree. 


. 

FURTHER  ADVENTURES  OF  THE  ANGEL  IN  THE 
VILLAGE  —  continued. 

XXX. 

AFTER  the  Angel  had  left  Crump's  house  he 
went  up  the  hill  again  towards  the  Vicarage. 
But  —  possibly  moved  by  the  desire  to  avoid 
Mrs.  Gustick  —  he  turned  aside  at  the  stile  and 
made  a  detour  by  the  Lark's  Field  and  Bradley's 
Farm. 

He  came  upon  the  Respectable  Tramp  slum- 
bering peacefully  among  the  wild-flowers.  He 
stopped  to  look,  struck  by  the  celestial  tran- 
quillity of  that  individual's  face.  And  even  as 
he  did  so  the  Respectable  Tramp  awoke  with  a 
start  and  sat  up.  He  was  a  pallid  creature, 
dressed  in  rusty  black,  with  a  broken-spirited 
crush  hat  cocked  over  one  eye.  "Good  after- 
noon," he  said  affably.  "How  are  you?" 

"Very  well,  thank  you,"  said  the  Angel,  who 
had  mastered  the  phrase. 

The  Respectable  Tramp  eyed  the  Angel  criti- 


138  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

cally.  "Padding  the  Hoof,  matey?"  he  said. 
"Like  me." 

The  Angel  was  puzzled  by  him.  "Why," 
asked  the  Angel,  "do  you  sleep  like  this  in- 
stead of  sleeping  up  in  the  air  on  a  Bed?" 

"Well  I'm  blowed!"  said  the  Respectable 
Tramp.  "Why  don't  I  sleep  in  a  bed?  Well, 
it's  like  this.  Sandringham's  got  the  painters 
in,  there's  the  drains  up  in  Windsor  Castle, 
and  I  'aven't  no  other  'ouse  to  go  to.  You 
'aven't  the  price  of  a  'arf  pint  in  your  pocket, 
'ave  yer?" 

"I  have  nothing  in  my  pocket,"  said  the 
Angel. 

"Is  this  here  village  called  Siddermorton ? " 
said  the  Tramp,  rising  creakily  to  his  feet  and 
pointing  to  the  clustering  roofs  down  the  hill. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Angel,  "they  call  it  Sidder- 
morton." 

"I  know  it,  I  know  it,"  said  the  Tramp. 
"And  a  very  pretty  little  village  it  is  too."  He 
stretched  and  yawned,  and  stood  regarding  the 
place.  "'Ouses,"  he  said  reflectively;  "Pro- 
juce"  —  waving  his  hand  at  the  cornfields  and 
orchards.  "Looks  cosy,  don't  it?" 


THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT.  139> 

"It  has  a  quaint  beauty  of  its  own,"  said  the 
Angel. 

"  It  'as  a  quaint  beauty  of  its  own  —  yes.  .  .  . 
Lord!  I'd  like  to  sack  the  blooming  place.  .  .  . 
I  was  born  there." 

"Dear  me,"  said  the  Angel. 

"Yes,  I  was  born  there.  Ever  heard  of  a 
pithed  frog?" 

"Pithed  frog,"  said  the  Angel.     "No!" 

"It's  a  thing  these  here  vivisectionists  do. 
They  takes  a  frog  and  they  cuts  out  his  brains 
and  they  shoves  a  bit  of  pith  in  the  place  of 
'em.  That's  a  pithed  frog.  Well  —  that  there 
village  is  full  of  pithed  human  beings." 

The  Angel  took  it  quite  seriously.  "Is  that 
so?"  he  said. 

"That's  so  —  you  take  my  word  for  it. 
Everyone  of  them  'as  'ad  their  brains  cut  out 
and  chunks  of  rotten  touchwood  put  in  the 
place  of  it.  And  you  see  that  little  red 
place  there?" 

"That's  called  the  national  school,"  said  the 
Angel. 

"Yes  —  that's  where  they  piths  'em,"  said  the 
Tramp,  quite  in  love  with  his  conceit. 


140  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Really!     That's  very  interesting." 

"It  stands  to  reason,"  said  the  Tramp.  "If 
they  'ad  brains  they'd  'ave  ideas,  and  if  they 
'ad  ideas  they'd  think  for  themselves.  And  you 
can  go  through  that  village  from  end  to  end 
and  never  meet  anybody  doing  as  much.  Pithed 
human  beings  they  are.  I  know  that  village. 
I  was  born  there,  and  I  might  be  there  now, 
a-toilin'  for  my  betters,  if  I  'adn't  struck  against 
the  pithin'." 

"Is  it  a  painful  operation?"  asked  the  Angel. 

"In  parts.  Though  it  ain't  the  heads  gets 
hurt.  Arid  it  lasts  a  long  time.  They  take 
'em  young  into  that  school,  and  they  says  to 
them,  'come  in  'ere  and  we'll  improve  your 
minds,'  they  says,  and  in  the  little  kiddies  go 
as  good  as  gold.  And  they  begins  shovin'  it 
into  them.  Bit  by  bit  and  'ard  and  dry,  shovin' 
out  the  nice  juicy  brains.  Dates  and  lists  and 
things.  Out  they  comes  no  brains  in  their 
'eads,  and  wound  up  nice  and  tight,  ready  to 
touch  their  'ats  to  anyone  who  looks  at  them. 
Why!  One  touched  'is  'at  to  me  yesterday. 
And  they  runs  about  spry  and  does  all  the  dirty 
work,  and  feels  thankful  they're  allowed  to  live. 


THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT.  141 

They  take  a  positive  pride  in  'ard  work  for  its 
own  sake.  Arter  they  bin  pithed.  See  that 
chap  ploughin'?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  Angel;   "is  he  pithed?" 

"Rather.  Else  he'd  be  paddin'  the  hoof  this 
pleasant  weather  —  like  me  and  the  blessed 
Apostles." 

"I  begin  to  understand,"  said  the  Angel, 
rather  dubiously. 

"I  knew  you  would,"  said  the  Philosophical 
Tramp.  "I  thought  you  was  the  right  sort. 
But  speaking  serious,  ain't  it  ridiculous?  —  cent- 
uries and  centuries  of  civilisation,  and  look  at 
that  poor  swine  there,  sweatin'  'isself  empty  arid 
trudging  up  that  'ill-side.  'E's  English,  'e  is. 
'E  belongs  to  the  top  race  in  creation,  'e  does. 
'E's  one  of  the  rulers  of  Indjer.  It's  enough  to 
make  a  nigger  laugh.  The  flag  that's  braved  a 
thousand  years  the  battle  an'  the  breeze  —  that's 
'is  flag.  There  never  was  a  country  was  as 
great  and  glorious  as  this.  Never.  And  that's 
wot  it  makes  of  us.  I'll  tell  you  a  little  story 
about  them  parts  as  you  seems  to  be  a  bit  of  a 
stranger.  There's  a  chap  called  Gotch,  Sir 
John  Gotch  they  calls  'im,  and  when  'e  was  a 


142  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

young  gent  from  Oxford,  I  was  a  little  chap  of 
eight  and  my  sister  was  a  girl  of  seventeen. 
Their  servant  she  was.  But  Lord!  everybody's 
'eard  that  story  —  it's  common  enough,  of  'im 
or  the  likes  of  'im." 

"I  haven't,"  said  the  Angel. 

"All  that's  pretty  and  lively  of  the  gals  they 
chucks  into  the  gutters,  and  all  the  men  with 
a  penurth  of  spunk  or  adventure,  all  who  won't 
drink  what  the  Curate's  wife  sends  'em  instead 
of  beer,  and  touch  their  hats  promiscous,  and 
leave  the  rabbits  and  birds  alone  for  their  bet- 
ters, gets  drove  out  of  the  villages  as  rough 
characters.  Talk  about  improvin'  the  race! 
Wot's  left  ain't  fit  to  look  a  nigger  in  the  face, 
a  Chinaman  'ud  be  ashamed  of  'em.  ..." 

"But  I  don't  understand,"  said  the  Angel. 
"I  don't  follow  you." 

At  that  the  Philosophic  Tramp  became  more 
explicit,  and  told  the  Angel  the  simple  story 
of  Sir  John  Gotch  and  the  kitchen-maid.  It's 
scarcely  necessary  to  repeat  it.  You  may  under- 
stand that  it  left  the  Angel  puzzled.  It  was 
full  of  words  he  did  not  understand,  for  the 
only  vehicle  of  emotion  the  Tramp  possessed 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  143 

was  blasphemy.  Yet,  though  their  tongues 
differed  so,  he  could  still  convey  to  the  Angel 
some  of  his  own  (probably  unfounded)  persua- 
sion of  the  injustice  and  cruelty  of  life,  and  the 
utter  detestableness  of  Sir  John  Gotch. 

The  last  the  Angel  saw  of  him  was  his  dusty 
black  back  receding  down  the  lane  towards 
Iping  Hanger.  A  pheasant  appeared  by  the 
roadside,  and  the  Philosophical  Tramp  immedi- 
ately caught  up  a  stone  and  sent  the  bird  cluck- 
ing with  a  viciously  accurate  shot.  Then  he 
disappeared  round  the  corner. 


MRS.  JEHORAM'S  BREADTH  OF  VIEW. 
XXXI. 

"I  HEARD  someone  playing  the  fiddle  in  the 
Vicarage,  as  I  came  by,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram, 
taking  her  cup  of  tea  from  Mrs.  Mendham. 

"The  Vicar  plays,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham.  "I 
have  spoken  to  George  about  it,  but  it's  no 
good.  I  do  not  think  a  Vicar  should  be  allowed 
to  do  such  things.  It's  so  foreign.  But  there, 
.he  .  .  ." 

"I  know,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram.  "But  I 
heard  the  Vicar  once  at  the  schoolroom.  I 
don't  think  this  was  the  Vicar.  It  was  quite 
clever,  some  of  it,  quite  smart,  you  know.  And 
new.  I  was  telling  dear  Lady  Hammergallow  this 
morning.  I  fancy  —  " 

"The  lunatic!  Very  likely.  These  half-wit- 
ted people  .  .  .  My  dear,  I  don't  think  I 
shall  ever  forget  that  dreadful  encounter.  Yes- 
terday." 

"Nor  I." 

144 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  145 

"  My  poor  girls !  They  are  too  shocked  to  say 
a  word  about  it.  I  was  telling  dear  Lady 
Ham " 

"  Quite  proper  of  them.  It  was  dreadful,  dear. 
For  them." 

"  And  now,  dear,  I  want  you  to  tell  me  frankly 
—  Do  you  really  believe  that  creature  was  a 
man?" 

"You  should  have  heard  the  violin." 

"  I  still  more  than  half  suspect,  Jessie " 

Mrs.  Mendham  leant  forward  as  if  to  whisper. 

Mrs.  Jehoram  helped  herself  to  cake.  "I'm 
sure  no  woman  could  play  the  violin  quite  like 
I  heard  it  played  this  morning." 

"Of  course,  if  you  say  so  that  settles  the 
matter,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham.  Mrs.  Jehoram 
was  the  autocratic  authority  in  Siddermorton 
upon  all  questions  of  art,  music  and  belles- 
lettres.  Her  late  husband  had  been  a  minor 
poet.  Then  Mrs.  Mendham  added  a  judicial 
"Still " 

"Do  you  know,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram,  "I'm 
half  inclined  to  believe  the  dear  Vicar's  story." 

"How  good  of  you,  Jessie,"  said  Mrs.  Mend- 
ham. 


146  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"  But  really,  I  don't  think  he  could  have  had 
anyone  in  the  Vicarage  before  that  afternoon. 
I  feel  sure  we  should  have  heard  of  it.  I  don't 
see  how  a  strange  cat  could  come  within  four 
miles  of  Siddermorton  without  the  report  coming 
round  to  us.  The  people  here  gossip  so.  ...  " 

"I  always  distrust  the  Vicar,"  said  Mrs. 
Mendham.  "I  know  him." 

"Yes.  But  the  story  is  plausible.  If  this 
Mr.  Angel  were  someone  very  clever  and  ec- 
centric —  " 

"He  would  have  to  be  very  eccentric  to  dress 
as  he  did.  There  are  degrees  and  limits,  dear." 

"But  kilts,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram. 

"Are  all  very  well   in   the   Highlands  ..." 

Mrs.  Jehoram's  eyes  had  rested  upon  a  black 
speck  creeping  slowly  across  a  patch  of  yellowish- 
green  up  the  hill. 

"There  he  goes,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram,  rising, 
"across  the  cornfield.  I'm  sure  that's  him.  I 
can  see  the  hump.  Unless  it's  a  man  with  a 
sack.  Bless  me,  Minnie!  here's  an  opera  glass. 
How  convenient  for  peeping  at  the  Vicarage! 
.  .  .  Yes,  it's  the  man.  He  is  a  man.  With 
such  a  sweet  face." 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  147 

Very  unselfishly  she  allowed  her  hostess  to 
share  the  opera  glass.  For  a  minute  there  was 
a  rustling  silence. 

"His  dress,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham,  "is  quite 
respectable  now.'* 

"Quite,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram. 

Pause. 

"  He  looks  cross !  " 

"And  his  coat  is  dusty." 

"  He  walks  steadily  enough, "  said  Mrs.  Mend- 
ham,  "or  one  might  think  .  .  .  This  hot 
weather  ..." 

Another  pause. 

"You  see,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram,  putting 
down  the  lorgnette.  "  What  I  was  going  to  say 
was,  that  possibly  he  might  be  a  genius  in  dis- 
guise." 

"If  you  can  call  next  door  to  nothing  a  dis- 
guise." 

"No  doubt  it  was  eccentric.  But  I've  seen 
children  in  little  blouses,  not  at  all  unlike  him. 
So  many  clever  people  are  peculiar  in  their 
dress  and  manners.  A  genius  may  steal  a 
horse  where  a  bank-clerk  may  not  look  over  the 
hedge.  Very  possibly  he's  quite  well  known 


148  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

and  laughing  at  our  Arcadian  simplicity.  And 
really  it  wasn't  so  improper  as  some  of  these 
New  Women  bicycling  costumes.  I  saw  one  in 
one  of  the  Illustrated  Papers  only  a  few  days 
ago  —  the  New  Budget  I  think  —  quite  tights, 
you  know,  dear.  No  —  I  cling  to  the  genius 
theory.  >  Especially  after  the  playing.  I'm  sure 
the  creature  is  original.  Perhaps  very  amusing. 
In  fact,  I  intend  to  ask  the  Vicar  to  intro- 
duce me." 

"My  dear!"   cried  Mrs.  Mendham. 

"I'm  resolute,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram. 

"I'm  afraid  you're  rash,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham. 
"Geniuses  and  people  of  that  kind  are  all  very 
well  in  London.  But  here  —  at  the  Vicarage." 

"We  are  going  to  educate  the  folks.  I  love 
originality.  At  any  rate  I  mean  to  see  him." 

"Take  care  you  don't  see  too  much  of  him," 
said  Mrs.  Mendham.  "I've  heard  the  fashion 
is  quite  changing.  I  understand  that  some  of 
the  very  best  people  have  decided  that  genius 
is  not  to  be  encouraged  any  more.  These  re- 
cent scandals  .  .  ." 

"Only  in  literature,  I  can  assure  you,  dear. 
In  music  ..." 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  149 

"Nothing  you  can  say,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs. 
Mendham,  going  off  at  a  tangent,  "will  con- 
vince me  that  that  person's  costume  was  not 
extremely  suggestive  and  improper." 


A  TRIVIAL  INCIDENT. 
XXXII. 

THE  Angel  came  thoughtfully  by  the  hedge 
across  the  field  towards  the  Vicarage.  The  rays 
of  the  setting  sun  shone  on  his  shoulders,  and 
touched  the  Vicarage  with  gold,  and  blazed  like 
fire  in  all  the  windows.  By  the  gate,  bathed  in 
the  sunlight,  stood  little  Delia,  the  waiting 
maid.  She  stood  watching  him  under  her  hand. 
It  suddenly  came  into  the  Angel's  mind  that 
she,  at  least,  was  beautiful,  and  not  only  beau- 
tiful but  alive  and  warm. 

She  opened  the  gate  for  him  and  stood  aside. 
She  was  sorry  for  him,  for  her  elder  sister  was 
a  cripple.  He  bowed  to  her,  as  he  would  have 
done  to  any  woman,  and  for  just  one  moment 
looked  into  her  face.  She  looked  back  at  him 
and  something  leapt  within  her. 

The  Angel  made  an  irresolute  movement. 
"Your  eyes  are  very  beautiful,"  he  said  quietly, 
with  a  remote  wonder  in  Ins  voice. 

150 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  151 

"Oh,  sir!"  she  said,  starting  back.  The 
Angel's  expression  changed  to  perplexity.  He 
went  on  up  the  pathway  between  the  Vicar's 
flower-beds,  and  she  stood  with  the  gate  held 
open  in  her  hand,  staring  after  him.  Just 
under  the  rose-twined  verandah  he  turned  and 
looked  at  her. 

She  still  stared  at  him  for  a  moment,  and 
then  with  a  queer  gesture  turned  round  with 
her  back  to  him,  shutting  the  gate  as  she  did 
so,  and  seemed  to  be  looking  down  the  valley 
towards  the  church  tower. 


THE  WARP  AND  THE  WOOF  OF  THINGS. 
XXXIII. 

AT  the  dinner  table  the  Angel  told  the  Vicar 
the  more  striking  of  his  day's  adventures. 

"The  strange  thing,"  said  the  Angel,  "is  the 
readiness  of  you  Human  Beings  —  the  zest,  with 
which  you  inflict  pain.  Those  boys  pelting  me 
this  morning " 

"Seemed  to  enjoy  it,"  said  the  Vicar.  "I 
know." 

"Yet  they  don't  like  pain,"  said  the  Angel. 

"No,"  said  the  Vicar;    "they  don't  like   it." 

"Then, "said  the  Angel,  "I  saw  some  beauti- 
ful plants  rising  with  a  spike  of  leaves,  two  this 
way  and  two  that,  and  when  I  caressed  one  it 
caused  the  most  uncomfortable " 

"  Stinging  nettle !  "   said  the  Vicar. 

"At  any  rate  a  new  sort  of  pain.  And 
another  plant  with  a  head  like  a  coronet,  and 
richly  decorated  leaves,  spiked  and  jagged " 

"A  thistle,  possibly." 
152 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  15$ 

"And  in  your  garden,  the  beautiful  sweet- 
smelling  plant " 

"The  sweet  briar,"  said  the  Vicar.  "I  re- 
member." 

"  And  that  pink  flower  that  sprang  out  of  the 
box " 

"Out  of  the  box?"  said  the  Vicar. 

"Last  night,"  said  the  Angel,  "that  went 
climbing  up  the  curtains Flame!" 

"Oh!  —  the  matches  and  the  candles!  Yes," 
said  the  Vicar. 

"Then  the  animals.  A  dog  to-day  behaved 

most  disagreeably And  these  boys,  and 

the  way  in  which  people  speak Every- 
one seems  anxious  —  willing  at  any  rate  —  to 
give  this  Pain.  Everyone  seems  busy  giving 
pain " 

"Or  avoiding  it,"  said  the  Vicar,  pushing  his 
dinner  away  before  him.  "Yes  —  of  course. 
It's  fighting  everywhere.  The  whole  living 
world  is  a  battle-field  —  the  whole  world.  We 
are  driven  by  Pain.  Here.  How  it  lies  on  the 
surface!  This  Angel  sees  it  in  a  day!" 

"  But  why  does  everyone  —  everything  —  want 
to  give  pain? "asked  the  Angel. 


154  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"  It  is  not  so  in  the  Angelic  Land  ? "  said  the 
Vicar. 

"No,"  said  the  Angel.     "Why  is  it  so  here?" 

The  Vicar  wiped  his  lips  with  his  napkin 
slowly.  "It  is  so,"  he  said.  "Pain,"  said  he 
still  more  slowly,  "is  the  warp  and  the  woof  of 
this  life.  Do  you  know,"  he  said,  after  a  pause, 
"it  is  almost  impossible  for  me  to  imagine  .  .  . 
a  world  without  pain.  .  .  .  And  yet,  as  you 
played  this  morning 

"But  this  world  is  different.  It  is  the  very 
reverse  of  an  Angelic  world.  Indeed,  a  num- 
ber of  people  —  excellent  religious  people  —  have 
been  so  impressed  by  the  universality  of  pain 
that  they  think,  after  death,  things  will  be  even 
worse  for  a  great  many  of  us.  It  seems  to  me 
an  excessive  view.  But  it's  a  deep  question. 
Almost  beyond  one's  power  of  discussion " 

And  incontinently  the  Vicar  plumped  into  an 
impromptu  dissertation  upon  "Necessity,"  how 
things  were  so  because  they  were  so,  how  one 
had  to  do  this  and  that.  "Even  our  food," 
said  the  Vicar.  "What?"  said  the  Angel.  "Is 
not  obtained  without  inflicting  Pain,"  said  the 
Vicar. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  155 

The  Angel's  face  went  so  white  that  the 
Vicar  checked  himself  suddenly.  Or  he  was 
just  on  the  very  verge  of  a  concise  explanation 
of  the  antecedents  of  a  leg  of  lamb.  There 
was  a  pause. 

"  By-the-bye, "  said  the  Angel,  suddenly. 
4 'Have  you  been  pithed?  Like  the  common 
people." 


THE  ANGEL'S  DEBUT. 
XXXIV. 

WHEN  Lady  Hammergallow  made  up  her 
mind,  things  happened  as  she  resolved.  And 
though  the  Vicar  made  a  spasmodic  protest, 
she  carried  out  her  purpose  and  got  audience, 
Angel,  and  violin  together,  at  Siddermorton 
House  before  the  week  was  out.  "A  genius 
the  Vicar  has  discovered,"  she  said ;  so  with 
eminent  foresight  putting  any  possibility  of 
blame  for  a  failure  on  the  Vicar's  shoulders. 
"The  dear  Vicar  tells  me,"  she  would  say,  and 
proceed  to  marvellous  anecdotes  of  the  Angel's 
cleverness  with  his  instrument.  But  she  was 
quite  in  love  with  her  idea  —  she  had  always  had 
a  secret  desire  to  play  the  patroness  to  obscure 
talent.  Hitherto  it  had  not  turned  out  to  be 
talent  when  it  came  to  the  test. 

"  It  would  be  such  a  good  thing  for  him,"  she 
said.  "  His  hair  is  long  already,  and  with  that 

156 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  157 

high  colour  he  would  be  beautiful,  simply  beauti- 
ful on  a  platform.  The  Vicar's  clothes  fitting 
him  so  badly  makes  him  look  quite  like  a 
fashionable  pianist  already.  And  the  scandal 
of  his  birth  —  not  told,  of  course,  but  whispered 

—  would  be  —  quite  an  Inducement when  he 

gets  to  London,  that  is." 

The  Vicar  had  the  most  horrible  sensations  as 
the  day  approached.  He  spent  hours  trying  to 
explain  the  situation  to  the  Angel,  other  hours 
trying  to  imagine  what  people  would  think,  still 
worse  hours  trying  to  anticipate  the  Angel's 
behaviour.  Hitherto  the  angel  had  always  played 
for  his  own  satisfaction.  The  Vicar  would  startle 
him  every  now  and  then  by  rushing  upon  him 
with  some  new  point  of  etiquette  that  had  just 
occurred  to  him.  As  for  instance :  "  It's  very 
important  where  you  put  your  hat,  you  know. 
Don't  put  it  on  a  chair,  whatever  you  do.  Hold 
it  until  you  get  your  tea,  you  know,  and  then  — 
let  me  see  —  then  put  it  down  somewhere,  you 
know."  The  journey  to  Siddermorton  House  was- 
accomplished  without  misadventure,  but  at  the 
moment  of  introduction  the  Vicar  had  a  spasm 
of  horrible  misgivings.  He  had  forgotten  to  ex- 


158  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

plain  introductions.  The  Angel's  naive  amuse- 
ment was  evident,  but  nothing  very  terrible 
happened. 

"Rummy  looking  greaser,"  said  Mr.  Rath- 
bone-Slater,  who  devoted  considerable  attention 
to  costume.  "  Wants  grooming.  No  manners. 
Grinned  when  he  saw  me  shaking  hands.  Did 
it  chic  enough,  I  thought." 

One  trivial  incident  occurred.  When  Lady 
Hammergallow  welcomed  the  Angel  she  looked 
at  him  through  her  glasses.  The  apparent  size 
of  her  e}^es  startled  him.  His  surprise  and  his 
quick  attempt  to  peer  over  the  brims  was  only 
too  evident.  But  the  Vicar  had  warned  him 
of  the  ear-trumpet. 

The  Angel's  incapacity  to  sit  on  anything  but 
a  music  stool  appeared  to  excite  some  interest 
among  the  ladies,  but  led  to  no  remarks.  They 
regarded  it  perhaps  as  the  affectation  of  a 
budding  professional.  He  was  remiss  with  the 
teacups  and  scattered  the  crumbs  of  his  cake 
abroad.  (You  must  remember  he  was  quite  an 
amateur  at  eating.)  He  crossed  his  legs.  He 
fumbled  over  the  hat  business  after  vainly  try- 
ing to  catch  the  Vicar's  eye.  The  eldest  Miss 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  159 

Papaver  tried  to  talk  to  him  about  continental 
watering  places  and  cigarettes,  and  formed  a  low 
opinion  of  his  intelligence. 

The  Angel  was  surprised  by  the  production  of 
an  easel  and  several  books  of  music,  and  a  little 
unnerved  at  first  by  the  sight  of  Lady  Hammer- 
gallow  sitting  with  her  head  on  one  side,  watch- 
ing him  with  those  magnified  eyes  through  her 
gilt  glasses. 

Mrs.  Jehoram  came  up  to  him  before  he  began 
to  play  and  asked  him  the  Name  of  the  Charming 
Piece  he  was  playing  the  other  afternoon.  The 
Angel  said  it  had  no  name,  and  Mrs.  Jehoram 
thought  music  ought  never  to  have  any  names- 
and  wanted  to  know  who  it  was  by,  and  when  the 
Angel  told  her  he  played  it  out  of  his  head,  she 
said  he  must  be  Quite  a  Genius  and  looked  open 
(and  indisputably  fascinating)  admiration  at  him. 
The  Curate  from  Iping  Hanger  (who  was  pro- 
fessionally a  Kelt  and  who  played  the  piano  and 
talked  colour  and  music  with  an  air  of  racial 
superiority)  watched  him  jealously. 

The  Vicar,  who  was  presently  captured  and 
set  down  next  to  Lady  Hammergallow,  kept  an 
anxious  eye  ever  Angelward  while  she  told  him 


160  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

particulars  of  the  incomes  made  by  violinists — • 
particulars  which,  for  the  most  part,  she  invented 
as  she  went  along.  She  had  been  a  little  ruffled 
by  the  incident  of  the  glasses,  but  had  decided 
that  it  came  within  the  limits  of  permissible 
originality. 

(Mrs.  Mendham  and  the  two  Mendham  girls 
had  declined  the  invitation  even  at  the  risk  of 
offending  Lady  Hammergallow.  They  had  the 
Parish  to  consider.  Mrs.  Mendham  was  surprised 
and  hurt  at  Lady  Hammergallow  giving  such 
people  encouragement.) 

So  figure  to  yourself  the  Green  Saloon  at 
Siddermorton  Park ;  an  Angel  thinly  disguised  in 
clerical  vestments  and  with  a  violin  in  his  hands, 
standing  by  the  grand  piano,  and  a  respectable 
gathering  of  quiet  nice  people,  nicely  dressed, 
grouped  about  the  room.  Anticipatory  gabble  — 
one  hears  scattered  fragments  of  conversation. 

"He  is  incog";  said  the  very  eldest  Miss 
Papaver  to  Mrs.  Pirbright.  "Isn't  it  quaint  and 
delicious.  Jessica  Jehoram  says  she  saw  him 
at  Vienna,  but  she  can't  remember  the  name. 
The  Vicar  knows  all  about  him,  but  he  is  so 
close " 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  161 

"How  hot  and  uncomfortable  the  dear  Vicar 
is  looking,"  said  Mrs.  Pirbright.  "  I've  noticed  it 
before  when  he  sits  next  to  Lady  Hammergallow. 
She  simply  will  not  respect  his  cloth.  She  goes 
on " 

"His  tie  is  all  askew,"  said  the  very  eldest 
Miss  Papaver,  "and  his  hair!  It  really  hardly 
looks  as  though  he  had  brushed  it  all  day." 

"  Looks  a  foreign  sort  of  chap.  Affected.  All 
very  well  in  a  drawing-room,"  said  George  Har- 
ringay,  sitting  apart  with  the  younger  Miss  Pir- 
bright. "  But  for  my  part  give  me  a  masculine 
man  and  a  feminine  woman.  What  do  you  think  ?  " 

"  Oh !  —  I  think  so  too,"  said  the  younger  Miss 
Pirbright. 

"  Guineas  and  guineas,"  said  Lady  Hammer- 
gallow. "I've  heard  that  some  of  them  keep 
quite  stylish  establishments.  You  would  scarcely 
credit  it " 

"  I  love  music,  Mr.  Angel,  I  adore  it.  It  stirs 
something  in  me.  I  can  scarcely  describe  it," 
said  Mrs.  Jehoram.  "Who  is  it  says  that  delicious 
antithesis :  Life  without  music  is  brutality ;  music 
without  life  is Dear  me  !  perhaps  you  remem- 
ber ?  Music  without  life  —  it's  Ruskin  I  think  ?  " 


162  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"  I'm  sorry  that  I  do  not,"  said  the  Angel.  "  I 
have  read  very  few  books." 

"How  charming  of  you!"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram. 
"I  wish  I  didn't.  I  sympathise  with  you  pro- 
foundly. I  would  do  the  same,  only  we  poor 

women 1  suppose  it's  originality  we  lack 

And  down  here  one  is  driven  to  the  most  desper- 
ate proceedings " 

"  He's  certainly  very  pretty.  But  the  ultimate 
test  of  a  man  is  his  strength,"  said  George  Har- 
ringay.  "What  do  you  think?" 

"Oh! — I  think  so  too,"  said  the  younger  Miss 
Pirbright. 

"It's  the  effeminate  man  who  makes  the  mas- 
culine woman.  When  the  glory  of  a  man  is  his 
hair,  what's  a  woman  to  do  ?  And  when  men  go 
running  about  with  beautiful  hectic  dabs " 

"  Oh  George !  You  are  so  dreadfully  satirical 
to-day,"  said  the  younger  Miss  Pirbright.  "I'm 
sure  it  isn't  paint." 

"I'm  really  not  his  guardian,  my  dear  Lady 
Hammergallow.  Of  course  it's  very  kind  indeed 
of  you  to  take  such  an  interest " 

"  Are  you  really  going  to  improvise  ?  "  said  Mrs. 
Jehoram  in  a  state  of  cooing  delight. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  163 

"SSsh!"  said  the  Curate  from  Iping  Hanger. 

Then  the  Angel  began  to  play,  looking  straight 
before  him  as  he  did  so,  thinking  of  the  wonderful 
things  of  the  Angelic  Land,  and  insensibly  letting 
the  sadness  he  was  beginning  to  feel,  steal  over 
the  fantasia  he  was  playing.  When  he  forgot  his 
company  the  music  was  strange  and  sweet ;  when 
the  sense  of  his  surroundings  floated  into  his  mind 
the  music  grew  capricious  and  grotesque.  Mrs. 
Jehoram  sat  and  looked  rapt  and  sympathetic  as 
hard  as  she  could  (though  the  music  was  puzzling 
at  times)  and  tried  to  catch  his  eye.  He  really 
had  a  wonderfully  expressive  face,  and  the  ten- 
derest  shades  of  expression !  And  Mrs.  Jehoram 
was  a  judge.  George  Harringay  looked  bored, 
until  the  younger  Miss  Pirbright,  who  adored 
him,  put  out  her  mousy  little  shoe  to  touch  his 
manly  boot,  and  then  he  turned  his  face  to  catch 
the  feminine  delicacy  of  her  coquettish  eye,  and 
so  was  comforted.  The  very  eldest  Miss  Papaver 
and  Mrs.  Pirbright  sat  quite  still  and  looked 
churchy  for  nearly  four  minutes. 

Then  said  the  eldest  Miss  Papaver  in  a  whisper, 
"I  always  Enjoy  violin  music  so  much."  And 
Mrs.  Pirbright  answered,  "  We  get  so  little  Nice 


164      *  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

music  down  here."  And  Miss  Papaver  said,  "  He 
plays  Very  nicely."  And  Mrs.  Pirbright,  "  Such 
a  Delicate  Touch ! "  And  Miss  Papaver,  "  Does 
Willie  keep  up  his  lessons?"  and  so  to  a  whis- 
pered conversation. 

The  Curate  from  Iping  Hanger  sat  (he  felt) 
in  full  view  of  the  company.  He  had  one  hand 
curled  round  his  ear,  and  his  eyes  hard  and  star- 
ing fixedly  at  the  pedestal  of  the  Hammergallow 
Sevres  vase.  He  supplied,  by  the  movements  of 
his  mouth,  a  kind  of  critical  guide  to  any  of  the 
company  who  were  disposed  to  avail  themselves 
of  it.  It  was  a  generous  way  he  had.  His  aspect 
was  severely  judicial,  tempered  by  starts  of  evi| 
dent  disapproval  and  guarded  appreciation.  The 
Vicar  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  stared  at  the 
Angel's  face,  and  was  presently  rapt  away  in  a 
wonderful  dream.  Lady  Hammergallow,  with 
quick  jerky  movements  of  the  head  and  a  low 
but  insistent  rustling,  surveyed  and  tried  to  judge 
of  the  effect  of  the  Angelic  playing.  Mr.  Rath- 
bone-Slater  stared  very  solemnly  into  his  hat  and 
looked  very  miserable,  and  Mrs.  Rathbone-Slater 
made  mental  memoranda  of  Mrs.  Jehoram's  sleeves. 
And  the  air  about  them  all  was  heavy  with  ex- 
quisite music  —  for  all  that  had  ears  to  hear. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  165 

"Scarcely  affected  enough,"  whispered  Lady 
Hammergallow  hoarsely,  suddenly  poking  the 
Vicar  in  the  ribs.  The  Vicar  came  out  of  Dream- 
land suddenly.  "Eigh?"  shouted  the  Vicar, 
startled,  coming  up  with  a  jump.  "  Sssh ! "  said 
the  Curate  from  Iping  Hanger,  and  everyone 
looked  shocked  at  the  brutal  insensibility  of 
Hilyer.  "So  unusual  of  the  Vicar,"  said  the 
very  eldest  Miss  Papaver,  "to  do  things  like 
that!"  The  Angel  went  on  playing. 

The  Curate  from  Iping  Hanger  began  making 
mesmeric  movements  with  his  index  finger,  and 
as  the  thing  proceeded  Mr.  Rathbone-Slater  got 
amazingly  limp.  He  solemnly  turned  his  hat 
round  and  altered  his  view.  The  Vicar  lapsed 
from  an  uneasy  discomfort  into  dreamland  again. 
Lady  Hammergallow  rustled  a  great  deal,  and 
presently  found  a  way  of  making  her  chair  creak. 
And  at  last  the  thing  came  to  an  end.  Lady 
Hammergallow  exclaimed  "  De — licious ! "  though 
she  had  never  heard  a  note,  and  began  clapping 
her  hands.  At  that  everyone  clapped  except  Mr. 
Rathbone-Slater,  who  rapped  his  hat  brim  instead. 
The  Curate  from  Iping  Hanger  clapped  with  a 
judicial  air. 


166  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"  So  I  said  (dap,  clap,  dap),  if  you  cannot  cook 
the  food  my  way  (clap,  clap,  clap)  you  must  go" 
said  Mrs.  Pirbright,  clapping  vigorously.  "  (This 
music  is  a  delightful  treat.)  " 

"  (It  is.  I  always  revel  in  music,)  "  said  the 
veiy  eldest  Miss  Papaver.  "And  did  she  im- 
prove after  that?" 

"  Not  a  bit  of  it,"  said  Mrs.  Pirbright. 

The  Vicar  woke  up  again  and  stared  round  the 
saloon.  Did  other  people  see  these  visions,  or 
were  they  confined  to  him  alone?  Surely  they 
must  all  see  .  .  .  and  have  a  wonderful  command 
of  their  feelings.  It  was  incredible  that  such 
music  should  not  affect  them.  "  He's  a  trifle 
gauche"  said  Lady  Hammergallow,  jumping  upon 
the  Vicar's  attention.  "He  neither  bows  nor 
smiles.  He  must  cultivate  oddities  like  that. 
Every  successful  executant  is  more  or  less 
gauche" 

"Did  you  really  make  that  up  yourself?"  said 
Mrs.  Jehoram,  sparkling  her  eyes  at  him,  "  as  you 
went  along.  Really,  it  is  wonderful!  Nothing 
less  than  wonderful." 

"A  little  amateurish,"  said  the  Curate  from 
Iping  Hanger  to  Mr.  Rathbone-Slater.  "  A  great 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  167 

gift,  undoubtedly,  but  a  certain  lack  of  sustained 
training.  There  were  one  or  two  little  things 
...  I  would  like  to  talk  to  him." 

"  His  trousers  look  like  concertinas,"  said  Mr. 
Rathbone-Slater.  "He  ought  to  be  told  that. 
It's  scarcely  decent." 

"Can  you  do  Imitations,  Mr.  Angel?"  said 
Lady  Hammergallow. 

"  Oh  c?o,  do  some  Imitations ! "  said  Mrs. 
Jehoram.  "I  adore  Imitations." 

"It  was  a  fantastic  thing,"  said  the  Curate  of 
Iping  Hanger  to  the  Vicar  of  Siddermorton,  wav- 
ing his  long  indisputably  musical  hands  as  he 
spoke;  "a  little  involved,  to  my  mind.  I  have 
heard  it  before  somewhere  —  I  forget  where.  He 
has  genius  undoubtedly,  but  occasionally  he  is  — 
loose.  There  is  a  certain  deadly  precision  want- 
ing. There  are  years  of  discipline  yet." 

"  I  don't  admire  these  complicated  pieces  of 
music,"  said  George  Harringay.  "  I  have  simple 
tastes,  I'm  afraid.  There  seems  to  me  no  tune 
in  it.  There's  "nothing  I  like  so  much  as  simple 
music.  Tune,  simplicity  is  the  need  of  the  age, 
in  my  opinion.  We  are  so  over  subtle.  Every- 
thing is  far-fetched.  Home-grown  thoughts  and 


168  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

'  Home,  Sweet  Home '  for  me.  What  do  you 
think  ?" 

"  Oh !  I  think  so  —  quite?'  said  the  younger 
Miss  Pirbright. 

"Well,  Amy,  chattering  to  George  as  usual?" 
said  Mrs.  Pirbright,  across  the  room. 

"As  usual,  Ma!"  said  the  younger  Miss  Pir- 
bright, glancing  round  with  a  bright  smile  at 
Miss  Papaver,  and  turning  again  so  as  not  to 
lose  the  next  utterance  from  George. 

"  I  wonder  if  you  and  Mr.  Angel  could  manage 
a  duet?"  said  Lady  Hammergallow  to  the  Curate 
from  Iping  Hanger,  who  was  looking  preternat- 
urally  gloomy. 

"  I'm  sure  I  should  be  delighted,"  said  the 
Curate  from  Iping  Hanger,  brightening  up. 

"  Duets  ! "  said  the  Angel ;  "  the  two  of  us. 
Then  he  can  play.  I  understood  —  the  Vicar  told 
me—" 

"  Mr.  Wilmerdings  is  an  accomplished  pianist," 
interrupted  the  Vicar. 

"  But  the  Imitations  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Jehoram,  who 
detested  Wilmerdings. 

"  Imitations  ! "  said  the  Angel. 

"  A  pig  squeaking,  a  cock  crowing,  you  know," 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

said  Mr.  Rathbone-Slater,  and  added  lower,  "  Best 
fun  you  can  get  out  of  a  fiddle  —  my  opinion.'* 

"I  really  don't  understand,"  said  the  Angel. 
"  A  pig  crowing  ! " 

"  You  don't  like  Imitations,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram. 
"  Nor  do  I  —  really.  I  accept  the  snub.  I  think 
they  degrade.  .  .  ." 

"Perhaps  afterwards  Mr.  Angel  will  Relent," 
said  Lady  Hammergallow,  when  Mrs.  Pirbrighthad 
explained  the  matter  to  her.  She  could  scarcely 
credit  her  ear-trumpet.  When  she  asked  for  Imi- 
tations she  was  accustomed  to  get  Imitations. 

Mr.  Wilmerdings  had  seated  himself  at  the 
piano,  and  had  turned  to  a  familiar  pile  of  music 
in  the  recess.  "What  do  you  think  of  that  Bar- 
carole thing  of  Spohr's  ?  "  he  said  over  his  shoul- 
der. "I  suppose  you  know  it?"  The  Angel 
looked  bewildered. 

He  opened  the  folio  before  the  Angel. 

"  What  an  odd  kind  of  book ! "  said  the  Angel. 
"  What  do  all  those  crazy  dots  mean  ?  "  (At  that 
the  Vicar's  blood  ran  cold.) 

"What  dots?"  said  the  Curate. 

"  There ! "  said  the  Angel  with  incriminating 
finger. 


170  THE  WONDEBFUL  VISIT. 

"  Oh  come  !  "  said  the  Curate. 

There  was  one  of  those  swift,  short  silences  that 
mean  so  much  in  a  social  gathering. 

Then  the  eldest  Miss  Papaver  turned  upon  the 
Vicar.  "  Does  not  Mr.  Angel  play  from  ordinary 
.  .  .  Music  —  from  the  ordinary  notation  ?  " 

"I  have  never  heard,"  said  the  Vicar,  getting 
red  now  after  the  first  shock  of  horror.  "I  have 
really  never  seen.  .  .  ." 

The  Angel  felt  the  situation  was  strained, 
though  what  was  straining  it  he  could  not  under- 
stand. He  became  aware  of  a  doubtful,  an  un- 
friendly look  upon  the  faces  that  regarded  him. 
"  Impossible ! "  he  heard  Mrs.  Pirbright  say ; 
*'  after  that  beautiful  music."  The  eldest  Miss 
Papaver  went  to  Lady  Hammergallow  at  once, 
and  began  to  explain  into  her  ear-trumpet  that 
Mr.  Angel  did  not  wish  to  play  with  Mr.  Wil- 
merdings,  and  alleged  an  ignorance  of  written 
music. 

"  He  cannot  play  from  Notes ! "  said  Lady 
Hammergallow  in  a  voice  of  measured  horror. 
•"  Non— sense  I " 

"Notes!"  said  the  Angel  perplexed.  "Are 
these  notes?"  asked  the  Angel. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  171 

"  It's  carrying  the  joke  too  far  —  simply  because 
he  doesn't  want  to  play  with  Wilmerdings,"  said 
Mr.  Rathbone-Slater  to  George  Harringay. 

There  was  an  expectant  pause.  The  Angel 
perceived  he  had  to  be  ashamed  of  himself.  He 
was  ashamed  of  himself. 

"Then,"  said  Lady  Hammergallow,  throwing 
her  head  back  and  speaking  with  deliberate  indig- 
nation, as  she  rustled  forward,  "  if  you  cannot  play 
with  Mr.  Wilmerdings  I  am  afraid  I  cannot  ask 
you  to  play  again."  She  made  it  sound  like  an 
ultimatum.  Her  glasses  in  her  hand  quivered 
violently  with  indignation.  The  Angel  was  now 
human  enough  to  appreciate  the  fact  that  he  was 
crushed. 

"What  is  it?"  said  little  Lucy  Rustchuck  in  the 
further  bay. 

"  He's  refused  to  play  with  old  Wilmerdings," 
said  Tommy  Rathbone-Slater.  "  What  a  lark  ! 
The  old  girl's  purple.  She  thinks  heaps  of  that 
ass,  Wilmerdings." 

"  Perhaps,  Mr.  Wilmerdings,  you  will  favour 
us  with  that  delicious  Polonaise  of  Chopin's," 
said  Lady  Hammergallow.  Everybody  else  was 
hushed.  The  indignation  of  Lady  Hammergallow 


172  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

inspired  much  the  same  silence  as  a  coming  earth- 
quake or  an  eclipse.  Mr.  Wilmerdings  perceived 
he  would  be  doing  a  real  social  service  to  begin 
at  once,  and  (be  it  entered  to  his  credit  now 
that  his  account  draws  near  its  settlement) 
he  did. 

"If  a  man  pretend  to  practise  an  Art,"  said 
George  Harringay,  "  he  ought  at  least  to  have 
the  conscience  to  study  the  elements  of  it.  What 
do  you  .  .  ." 

"  Oh !  I  think  so  too,"  said  the  youngest  Miss 
Pirbright. 

The  Vicar  felt  that  the  heavens  had  fallen. 
He  sat  crumpled  up  in  his  chair,  a  shattered  man. 
Lady  Hammergallow  sat  down  next  to  him  with- 
out appearing  to  see  him.  She  was  breathing 
heavily,  but  her  face  was  terribly  calm.  Every- 
one sat  down.  Was  the  Angel  grossly  ignorant 
or  only  grossly  impertinent?  The  Angel  was 
vaguely  aware  of  some  frightful  offence,  aware 
that  in  some  mysterious  way  he  had  ceased  to  be 
the  centre  of  the  gathering.  He  saw  reproachful 
despair  in  the  Vicar's  eye.  He  drifted  slowly 
towards  the  window  in  the  recess  and  sat  down 
on  the  little  octagonal  Moorish  stool  by  the  side 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  173 

of  Mrs.  Jehoram.  And  under  the  circumstances 
he  appreciated  at  more  than  its  proper  value  Mrs. 
Jehoram's  kindly  smile.  He  put  down  the  violin 
in  the  window  seat. 


THE  ANGEL'S  DBBUT  —  continued. 
XXXV. 

MRS.  JEHORAM  and  the  Angel  (apart)  —  Mr. 
Wilmerdings  playing. 

"  I  have  so  longed  for  a  quiet  word  with  you," 
said  Mrs.  Jehoram  in  a  low  tone.  "  To  tell  you 
how  delightful  I  found  your  playing." 

"  I  am  glad  it  pleased  you,"  said  the  Angel. 

"Pleased  is  scarcely  the  word,"  said  Mrs. 
Jehoram.  "I  was  moved  —  profoundly.  These 
others  did  not  understand  ...  I  was  glad  you 
did  not  play  with  him." 

The  Angel  looked  at  the  mechanism  called 
Wilmerdings,  and  felt  glad  too.  (The  Angelic 
conception  of  duets  is  a  kind  of  conversation 
upon  violins.)  But  he  said  nothing. 

"I   worship   music,"    said   Mrs.   Jehoram.     "I 
know  nothing   about  it  technically,  but  there  is 
something  in  it  —  a  longing,  a  wish  .  .  ." 
*  174 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  175 

The  Angel  stared  at  her  face.     She  met  his  eyes. 

"  You  understand,"  she  said.  "  I  see  you  under- 
stand." He  was  certainly  a  very  nice  boy,  senti- 
mentally precocious  perhaps,  and  with  deliciously 
liquid  eyes. 

There  was  an  interval  of  Chopin  (Op.  40} 
played  with  immense  precision. 

Mrs.  Jehoram  had  a  sweet  face  still,  in  shadow, 
with  the  light  falling  round  her  golden  hair,  and 
a  curious  theory  flashed  across  the  Angel's  mind. 
The  perceptible  powder  only  supported  his  view 
of  something  infinitely  bright  and  lovable  caughtr 
tarnished,  coarsened,  coated  over. 

"  Do  you,"  said  the  Angel  in  a  low  tone.  "  Are 
you  .  .  .  separated  from  .  .  .  your  world?" 

"  As  you  are  ?  "  whispered  Mrs.  Jehoram. 

"This  is  so  —  cold,"  said  the  Angel.  "So 
harsh!"  He  meant  the  whole  world. 

"I  feel  it  too,"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram,  referring 
to  Siddermorton  Home. 

"There  are  those  who  cannot  live  without 
sympathy,"  she  said  after  a  sympathetic  pause. 
"  And  times  when  one  feels  alone  in  the  world. 
Fighting  a  battle  against  it  all.  Laughing,  flirt- 
ing, hiding  the  pain  of  it  .  .  ." 


176  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"  And  hoping,"  said  the  Angel  with  a  wonder- 
ful glance  —  "  Yes." 

Mrs.  Jehoram  (who  was  an  epicure  of  flirta- 
tions) felt  the  Angel  was  more  than  redeeming 
the  promise  of  his  appearance.  (Indisputably  he 
worshipped  her.)  "  Do  you  look  for  sympathy  ?  " 
she  said.  "  Or  have  you  found  it  ?  " 

"  I  think,"  said  the  Angel,  very  softly,  leaning 
forward,  "  I  think  I  have  found  it." 

Interval  of  Chopin  Op.  40.  The  very  eldest 
Miss  Papaver  and  Mrs.  Pirbright  whispering. 
Lady  Hammergallow  (glasses  up)  looking  down 
the  saloon  with  an  unfriendly  expression  at  the 
Angel.  Mrs.  Jehoram  and  the  Angel  exchanging 
deep  and  significant  glances. 

"  Her  name,"  said  the  Angel  (Mrs.  Jehoram 
made  a  movement),  "  is  Delia.  She  is  .  .  ." 

"  Delia !  "  said  Mrs.  Jehoram  sharply,  suddenly 
realising  a  terrible  misunderstanding.  "  A  fanci- 
ful name  .  .  .  Why!  ...  No!  Not  that 
little  housemaid  at  the  Vicarage — ?  ..." 

The  Polonaise  terminated  with  a  flourish.  The 
Angel  was  quite  surprised  at  the  change  in  Mrs. 
Jehoram's  expression. 

"  I  never  did ! "  said  Mrs.  Jehoram,  recovering. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  177 

**  To  make  me  your  confidant  in  an  intrigue  with 
a  servant.  Really,  Mr.  Angel,  it's  possible  to  be 
too  original  ..." 

Then  suddenly  their  colloquy  was  interrupted. 


THE  ANGEL'S  DEBUT —  continued. 
XXXVI. 

THIS  section  is  (so  far  as  my  memory  goes)  the 
shortest  in  the  book. 

But  the  enormity  of  the  offence  necessitates 
the  separation  of  this  section  from  all  other 
sections. 

The  Vicar,  you  must  understand,  had  done  his 
best  to  inculcate  the  recognised  differentiae  of  a 
gentleman.  "Never  allow  a  lady  to  carry  any- 
thing," said  the  Vicar.  "  Say,  '  permit  me '  and 
relieve  her."  "Always  stand  until  every  lady  is 
seated."  "Always  rise  and  open  a  door  for  a 
lady  ..."  and  so  forth.  (All  men  who  have 
elder  sisters  know  that  code.) 

And  the  Angel  (who  had  failed  to  relieve  Lady 
Hammergallow  of  her  teacup)  danced  forward 
with  astonishing  dexterity  (leaving  Mrs.  Jehoram 

178 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  179 

in  the  window  seat)  and  with  an  elegant  "  permit 
nie"  rescued  the  tea-tray  from  Lady  Hammer- 
gallow's  pretty  parlour-maid  and  vanished  offi- 
ciously in  front  of  her.  The  Vicar  rose  to  his  feet 
with  an  inarticulate  cry. 


THE  ANGEL'S  DEBUT  —  continued. 
XXXVII. 

"HE'S  drunk!"  said  Mr.  Rathbone-Slater, 
breaking  a  terrific  silence.  "That's  the  matter 
with  him" 

Mrs.  Jehoram  laughed  hysterically. 

The  Vicar  stood  up,  motionless,  staring.  "  Oh! 
I  forgot  to  explain  servants  to  him  I "  said  the 
Vicar  to  himself  in  a  swift  outbreak  of  remorse. 
"  I  thought  he  did  understand  servants." 

"  Really,  Mr.  Hilyer ! "  said  Lady  Hammer- 
gallow,  evidently  exercising  enormous  self-control 
and  speaking  in  panting  spasms.  "  Really,  Mr. 
Hilyer !  —  Your  genius  is  too  terrible.  I  must, 
I  really  must,  ask  you  to  take  him  home." 

So  to  the  dialogue  in  the  corridor  of  alarmed 
maid-servant  and  well-meaning  (but  shockingly 
gauche)  Angel  —  appears  the  Vicar,  his  botryoidal 
little  face  crimson,  gaunt  despair  in  his  eyes,  and 
his  necktie  under  his  left  ear. 

180 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  181 

"Come,"    he  said  —  struggling  with  emotion. 
Come   away.  ...     I  ...  I  am   disgraced  for 


ever." 


And  the  Angel  stared  for  a  second  at  him  and 
obeyed  —  meekly,  perceiving  himself  in  the  pres- 
ence of  unknown  but  evidently  terrible  forces. 

And  so  began  and  ended  the  Angel's  social 
career. 

In  the  informal  indignation  meeting  that  fol- 
lowed, Lady  Hammergallow  took  the  (informal) 
chair.  "  I  feel  humiliated,"  she  said.  "  The  Vicar 
assured  me  he  was  an  exquisite  player.  I  never 
imagined  .  .  ." 

"He  was  drunk,"  said  Mr.  Rathbone-Slater. 
"  You  could  tell  it  from  the  way  he  fumbled  with 
his  tea." 

"  Such  a  fiasco  !  "  said  Mrs.  Mergle. 

"The  Vicar  assured  me,"  said  Lady  Hammer- 
gallow. " « The  man  I  have  staying  with  me  is  a 
musical  genius,'  he  said.  His  very  words." 

"His  ears  must  be  burning  anyhow,"  said 
Tommy  Rathbone-Slater. 

"I  was  trying  to  keep  him  Quiet,"  said  Mrs. 
Jehoram.  "By  humouring  him.  And  do  you 
know  the  things  he  said  to  me  —  there ! " 


182  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"  The  thing  he  played,"  said  Mr.  Wilmerdings, 
"  —  I  must  confess  I  did  not  like  to  charge  him 
to  his  face.  But  really!  It  was  merely  drifting" 

"  Just  fooling  with  a  fiddle,  eigh  ?  "  said  George 
Harringay.  "  Well,  I  thought  it  was  beyond  me. 
So  much  of  your  fine  music  is " 

"  Oh,  George ! "  said  the  youngest  Miss  Pir- 
bright. 

"  The  Vicar  was  a  bit  on  too  —  to  judge  by  his 
tie,"  said  Mr.  Rathbone-Slater.  "It's  a  dashed 
nimmy  go.  Did  you  notice  how  he  fussed  after 
the  genius?" 

"  One  has  to  be  so  very  careful,"  said  the  very 
eldest  Miss  Papaver. 

"He  told  me  he  is  in  love  with  the  Vicar's 
housemaid!"  said  Mrs.  Jehoram.  "I  almost 
laughed  in  his  face." 

"The  Vicar  ought  never  to  have  brought  him 
here,"  said  Mrs.  Rathbone-Slater  with  decision. 


THE  TBOUBLB  OF  THE  BARBED  WIRE. 

xxxvni. 

So,  ingloriously,  ended  the  Angel's  first  and 
last  appearance  in  Society.  Vicar  and  Angel  re- 
turned to  the  Vicarage  ;  crestfallen  black  figures 
in  the  bright  sunlight,  going  dejectedly.  The 
Angel,  deeply  pained  that  the  Vicar  was  pained. 
The  Vicar,  dishevelled  and  desperate,  intercalating 
spasmodic  remorse  and  apprehension  with  broken 
explanations  of  the  Theory  of  Etiquette.  "  They 
do  not  understand,"  said  the  Vicar  over  and  over 
again.  "  They  will  all  be  so  very  much  aggrieved. 
I  do  not  know  what  to  say  to  them.  It  is  all  so 
confused,  so  perplexing."  And  at  the  gate  of 
the  Vicarage,  at  the  very  spot  where  Delia  had 
first  seemed  beautiful,  stood  Horrocks,  the  village 
constable,  awaiting  them.  He  held  coiled  up 
about  his  hand  certain  short  lengths  of  barbed 


. 
wire. 


183 


184  THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"Good-evening,  Horrocks,"  said  the  Vicar  as 
the  constable  held  the  gate  open. 

"  Evening  Sir,"  said  Horrocks,  and  added  in  a 
kind  of  mysterious  undertone,  "  Could  I  speak  to 
you  a  minute,  Sir  ?  " 

"  Certainly,"  said  the  Vicar.  The  Angel  walked 
on  thoughtfully  to  the  house,  and  meeting  Delia 
in  the  hall  stopped  her  and  cross-examined  her 
at  length  over  differences  between  Servants  and 
Ladies. 

"  You'll  excuse  my  taking  the  liberty,  Sir,"  said 
Horrocks,  "but  there's  trouble  brewin'  for  that 
crippled  gent  you  got  stayin'  here." 

"  Bless  me !  "  said  the  Vicar.  "  You  don't  say 
so!" 

"  Sir  John  Gotch,  Sir.  He's  very  angry  indeed, 

Sir.  His  language,  Sir But  I  felt  bound  to 

tell  you,  Sir.  He's  certain  set  on  taking  out  a 
summons  on  account  of  that  there  barbed  wire. 
Certain  set,  Sir,  he  is." 

"Sir  John  Gotch!"  said  the  Vicar.  "Wire! 
I  don't  understand." 

"  He  asked  me  to  find  out  who  did  it.  Course 
I've  had  to  do  my  duty,  Sir.  Naturally  a  dis- 
agreeable one." 


THE   WONDEBFUL  VISIT.  185 

"  Barbed  wire  !  Duty  !  I  don't  understand 
you,  Horrocks." 

44  I'm  afraid,  Sir,  there's  no  denying  the  evidence- 
I've  made  careful  enquiries,  Sir."  And  forthwith 
the  constable  began  telling  the  Vicar  of  a  new 
and  terrible  outrage  committed  by  the  Angelie 
visitor. 

But  we  need  not  follow  that  explanation  in 
detail  —  or  the  subsequent  confession.  (For  my 
own  part  I  think  there  is  nothing  more  tedious 
than  dialogue.)  It  gave  the  Vicar  a  new  view  of 
the  Angelic  character,  a  vignette  of  the  Angelie 
indignation.  A  shady  lane,  sun-mottled,  sweet 
hedges  full  of  honeysuckle  and  vetch  on  either 
side,  and  a  little  girl  gathering  flowers,  forgetful 
of  the  barbed  wire  which,  all  along  the  Sidderford 
Road,  fenced  in  the  dignity  of  Sir  John  Gotch 
from  "  bounders "  and  the  detested  "  million.'* 
Then  suddenly  a  gashed  hand,  a  bitter  outcry,  and 
the  Angel  sympathetic,  comforting,  inquisitive. 
Explanations  sob-set,  and  then  —  altogether  novel 
phenomenon  in  the  Angelic  career — passion.  A 
furious  onslaught  upon  the  barbed  wire  of  Sir 
John  Gotch,  barbed  wire  recklessly  handled, 
slashed,  bent  and  broken.  Yet  the  Angel  acted 


186  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

without  personal  malice  —  saw  in  the  thing  only 
an  ugly  and  vicious  plant  that  trailed  insidiously 
among  its  fellows.  Finally  the  Angel's  explana- 
tions gave  the  Vicar  a  picture  of  the  Angel  alone 
amidst  his  destruction,  trembling  and  amazed  at 
the  sudden  force,  not  himself,  that  had  sprung  up 
within  him,  and  set  him  striking  and  cutting. 
Amazed,  too,  at  the  crimson  blood  that  trickled 
down  his  fingers. 

"  It  is  still  more  horrible,"  said  the  Angel  when 
the  Vicar  had  explained  the  artificial  nature  of 
the  thing.  "  If  I  had  seen  the  man  who  put  this 
silly-cruel  stuff  there  to  hurt  little  children,  I 
know  I  should  have  tried  to  inflict  pain  upon  him. 
I  have  never  felt  like  this  before.  I  am  indeed 
becoming  tainted  and  coloured  altogether  by  the 
wickedness  of  this  world. 

"To  think,  too,  that  you  men  should  be  so 
foolish  as  to  combine  to  uphold  a  law  that  lets  a 
man  do  such  spiteful  things.  Yes  —  I  know ;  you 
will  say  it  has  to  be  so.  For  some  remoter 
reason.  That  is  a  thing  that  only  makes  me 
angrier.  Why  cannot  an  act  rest  on  its  own 
merits?  .  .  ." 

And  that  was  the  incident  of  which  the  Vicar 


THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT.  187 

now  gradually  learnt  the  history,  getting  the  bare 
outline  from  Horrocks,  the  colour  and  emotion 
subsequently  from  the  Angel.  The  thing  had 
happened  the  day  before  the  musical  festival  at 
Siddermorton  House. 

"Have  you  told  Sir  John  who  did  it?"  asked 
the  Vicar.  "And  are  you  sure?" 

"Quite  sure,  Sir.  There  can  be  no  doubting  it 
was  your  gentleman,  Sir.  I've  not  told  Sir  John 
yet,  Sir.  But  I  shall  have  to  tell  Sir  John  this 
evening.  Meaning  no  offence  to  you,  Sir,  as  I 
hopes  you'll  see.  It's  my  duty,  Sir.  Besides 
which- " 

"  Of  course,"  said  the  Vicar,  hastily.  "Certainly 
it's  your  duty.  And  what  will  Sir  John  do  ?  " 

"  He's  dreadful  set  against  the  person  who  did 
it  —  destroying  property  like  that — and  sort  of 
slapping  his  arrangements  in  the  face." 

Pause.  Horrocks  made  a  movement.  The 
Vicar,  tie  almost  at  the  back  of  his  neck  now, 
a  most  unusual  thing  for  him,  stared  blankly  at 
his  toes. 

"  I  thought  I'd  tell  you,  Sir,"  said  Horrocks. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Vicar.  "Thanks,  Horrocks, 
thanks!"  He  scratched  the  back  of  his  head. 


188  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"You  might  perhaps  ...  I  think  it's  the  best 
way  .  .  .  Quite  sure  Mr.  Angel  did  it  ?  " 

"  Sherlock  'Omes,  Sir,  couldn't  be  cocksurer." 
"  Then  I'd  better  give  you  a  little  note  to  the 
Squire." 


THE  TROUBLE  OF  THE  BARBED   WIBE — 
continued. 

XXXIX. 

THE  Vicar's  table-talk  at  dinner  that  night, 
after  the  Angel  had  stated  his  case,  was  full  of 
grim  explanations,  prisons,  madness. 

"  It's  too  late  to  tell  the  truth  about  you  now," 
said  the  Vicar.  "Besides,  that's  impossible.  I 
really  do  not  know  what  to  say.  We  must  face 
our  circumstances,  I  suppose.  I  am  so  undecided 
—  so  torn.  It's  the  two  worlds.  If  your  Angelic 
world  were  only  a  dream,  or  if  this  world  were 
only  a  dream  —  or  if  I  could  believe  either  or  both 
dreams,  it  would  be  all  right  with  me.  But  here 
is  a  real  Angel  and  a  real  summons  —  how  to 
reconcile  them  I  do  not  know.  I  must  talk  to 
Gotch.  .  .  .  But  he  won't  understand.  Noboch: 
will  understand.  .  .  ." 

"  I  am  putting  you  to  terrible  inconvenience,  I 
am  afraid.  My  appalling  unworldliness  — " 

189 


190  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"  It's  not  you,"  said  the  Vicar.  "  It's  not  you. 
I  perceive  you  have  brought  something  strange 
and  beautiful  into  my  life.  It's  not  you.  It's 
myself.  If  I  had  more  faith  either  way.  If  I 
could  believe  entirely  in  this  world,  and  call  you 
an  Abnormal  Phenomenon,  as  Crump  does.  But 
no.  Terrestrial  Angelic,  Angelic  Terrestrial.  .  .  . 
See-Saw. 

"  Still,  Gotch  is  certain  to  be  disagreeable,  most 
disagreeable.  He  always  is.  It  puts  me  into  his 
hands.  He  is  a  bad  moral  influence,  I  know. 
Drinking.  Gambling.  Worse.  43 till,  one  must 
render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Csesar's. 
And  he  is  against  Disestablishment.  .  .  ." 

Then  the  Vicar  would  revert  to  the  social 
collapse  of  the  afternoon.  "You  are  so  very 
fundamental,  you  know,"  he  said — several  times. 

The  Angel  went  to  his  own  room  puzzled 
but  very  depressed.  Every  day  the  world  had 
frowned  darker  upon  him  and  his  angelic  ways. 
He  could  see  how  the  trouble  affected  the  Vicar, 
yet  he  could  not  imagine  how  he  could  avert  it. 
It  was  all  so  strange  and  unreasonable.  Twice 
again,  too,  he  had  been  pelted  out  of  the  village. 

He  found  the  violin  lying  on  his  bed  where  he 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  191 

had  laid  it  before  dinner.  And  taking  it  up  he 
began  to  play  to  comfort  himself.  But  now  he 
played  no  delicious  vision  of  the  Angelic  Land. 
The  iron  of  the  world  was  entering  into  his  soul. 
For  a  week  now  he  had  known  pain  and  rejec- 
tion, suspicion  and  hatred;  a  strange  new  spirit 
of  revolt  was  growing  up  in  his  heart.  He  played 
a  melody,  still  sweet  and  tender  as  those  of  the 
Angelic  Land,  but  charged  with  a  new  note,  the 
note  of  human  sorrow  and  effort,  now  swelling 
into  something  like  defiance,  dying  now  into  a 
plaintive  sadness.  He  played  softly,  playing  to 
himself  to  comfort  himself,  but  the  Vicar  heard, 
and  all  his  finite  bothers  were  swallowed  up  in  a 
hazy  melancholy,  a  melancholy  that  was  some- 
how quite  remote  from  sorrow.  And  besides  the 
Vicar,  the  Angel  had  another  hearer  of  whom 
neither  Angel  nor  Vicar  was  thinking. 


DELIA. 
XL. 

SHE  was  only  four  or  five  yards  away  from  the 
Angel  in  the  westward  gable.  The  diamond- 
paned  window  of  her  little  white  room  was  open. 
She  knelt  on  her  box  of  japanned  tin,  and  rested 
her  chin  on  her  hands,  her  elbows  on  the  window- 
sill.  The  young  moon  hung  over  the  pine  trees, 
and  its  light,  cool  and  colourless,  lay  softly  upon 
the  silent-sleeping  world.  Its  light  fell  upon  her 
white  face,  and  discovered  new  depths  in  her 
dreaming  eyes.  Her  soft  lips  fell  apart  and 
showed  the  little  white  teeth. 

Delia  was  thinking  vaguely,  wonderfully,  as 
girls  will  think.  It  was  feeling  rather  than  think- 
ing; clouds  of  beautiful  translucent  emotion  drove 
across  the  clear  sky  of  her  mind,  taking  shape 
that  changed  and  vanished.  She  had  all  that 
wonderful  emotional  tenderness,  that  subtle  ex- 
quisite desire  for  self-sacrifice,  which  exists  so 

192 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  193 

inexplicably  in  a  girl's  heart,  exists  it  seems  only 
to  be  presently  trampled  under  foot  by  the  grim 
and  gross  humours  of  daily  life,  to  be  ploughed 
in  again  roughly  and  remorselessly,  as  the  farmer 
ploughs  in  the  clover  again  that  has  sprung  up  in 
the  soil.  She  had  been  looking  out  at  the  tran- 
quillity of  the  moonlight  long  before  the  Angel 
began  to  play  —  waiting ;  then  suddenly  the  quiet, 
motionless  beauty  of  silver  and  shadow  was  suf- 
fused with  tender  music. 

She  did  not  move,  but  her  lips  closed  and  her 
eyes  grew  even  softer.  She  had  been  thinking 
before  of  the  strange  glory  that  had  suddenly 
flashed  out  about  the  stooping  hunchback  when 
he  spoke  to  her  in  the  sunset ;  of  that  and  of  a 
dozen  other  glances,  chance  turns,  even  once  the 
touching  of  her  hand.  That  afternoon  he  had 
spoken  to  her,  asking  strange  questions.  Now  the 
music  seemed  to  bring  his  very  face  before  her, 
his  look  of  half  curious  solicitude,  peering  into  her 
face,  into  her  eyes,  into  her  and  through  her,  deep 
down  into  her  soul.  He  seemed  now  to  be  speak- 
ing directly  to  her,  telling  her  of  his  solitude  and 
trouble.  Oh !  that  regret,  that  longing !  For  he 
was  in  trouble.  And  how  could  a  servant-girl 


194  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

help  him,  this  soft-spoken  gentleman  who  carried 
himself  so  kindly,  who  played  so  sweetly.  The 
music  was  so  sweet  and  keen,  it  came  so  near  to 
the  thought  of  her  heart,  that  presently  one  band 
tightened  on  the  other,  and  the  tears  came  stream- 
ing down  her  face. 

As  Crump  would  tell  you,  people  do  not  do 
that  kind  of  thing  unless  there  is  something 
wrong  with  the  nervous  system.  But  then,  from 
the  scientific  point  of  view,  being  in  love  is  a 
pathological  condition. 

I  am  painfully  aware  of  the  objectionable 
nature  of  my  story  here.  I  have  even  thought  of 
wilfully  perverting  the  truth  to  propitiate  the 
Lady  Reader.  But  I  could  not.  The  story  has 
been  too  much  for  me.  I  do  the  thing  with  my 
eyes  open.  Delia  must  remain  what  she  really 
was  —  a  servant-girl.  I  know  that  to  give  a 
mere  servant-girl,  or  at  least  an  English  servant- 
girl,  the  refined  feelings  of  a  human  being,  to 
present  her  as  speaking  with  anything  but  an 
intolerable  confusion  of  aspirates,  places  me 
outside  the  pale  of  respectable  writers.  Asso- 
ciation with  servants,  even  in  thought,  is  dangerous 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  195 

in  these  days.  I  can  only  plead  (pleading  vainly, 
I  know),  that  Delia  was  a  very  exceptional 
servant-girl.  Possibly,  if  one  enquired,  it  might 
be  found  that  her  parentage  was  upper  middle- 
class —  that  she  was  made  of  the  finer  upper 
middle-class  clay.  And  (this  perhaps  may  avail 
me  better)  I  will  promise  that  in  some  future 
work  I  will  redress  the  balance,  and  the  patient 
reader  shall  have  the  recognised  article,  enor- 
mous feet  and  hands,  systematic  aspiration  of 
vowels  and  elimination  of  aspirates,  no  figure 
(only  middle-class  girls  have  figures — the  thing 
is  beyond  a  servant-girl's  means),  a  fringe  (by 
agreement),  and  a  cheerful  readiness  to  dispose 
of  her  self-respect  for  half-a-crown.  That  is  the 
accepted  English  servant,  the  typical  English 
woman  (when  stripped  of  money  and  accomplish- 
ments) as  she  appears  in  the  works  of  contem- 
porary writers.  But  Delia  somehow  was  different. 
I  can  only  regret  the  circumstance  —  it  was  alto- 
gether beyond  my  control. 


DOCTOR  CRUMP  ACTS. 
XLI. 

EARLY  the  next  morning  the  Angel  went 
down  through  the  village,  and  climbing  the 
fence,  waded  through  the  waist-high  reeds  that 
fringe  the  Sidder.  He  was  going  to  Ban  dram 
Bay  to  take  a  nearer  view  of  the  sea,  which  one 
could  just  see  on  a  clear  day  from  the  higher 
parts  of  Siddermorton  Park.  And  suddenly  he 
came  upon  Crump  sitting  on  a  log  and  smoking. 
(Crump  always  smoked  exactly  two  ounces  per 
week  —  and  he  always  smoked  it  in  the  open 
air.) 

"Hullo!"  said  Crump,  in  his  healthiest  tone. 
"How's  the  wing?" 

"Very  well,"  said  the  Angel.  "The  pain's 
gone." 

"  I  suppose  you  know  you  are  trespassing  ?  " 

"  Trespassing !  "  said  the  Angel. 
196 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  197 

"  I  suppose  you  don't  know  what  that  means," 
said  Crump. 

"  I  don't,"  said  the  Angel. 

"  I  must  congratulate  you.  I  don't  know  how 
long  you  will  last,  but  you  are  keeping  it  up 
remarkably  well.  I  thought  at  first  you  were 
a  mattoid,  but  you're  so  amazingly  consistent. 
Your  attitude  of  entire  ignorance  of  the  element- 
ary facts  of  Life  is  really  a  very  amusing  pose. 
You  make  slips  of  course,  but  very  few.  But 
surely  we  two  understand  one  another." 

He  smiled  at  the  Angel.  "You  would  beat 
Sherlock  Holmes.  I  wonder  who  you  really  are." 

The  Angel  smiled  back,  with  eyebrows  raised 
and  hands  extended.  "It's  impossible  for  you 
to  know  who  I  am.  Your  eyes  are  blind,  your 
ears  deaf,  your  soul  dark,  to  all  that  is  wonderful 
about  me.  It's  no  good  my  telling  that  I  fell  into 
your  world." 

The  Doctor  waved  his  pipe.  "  Not  that,  please. 
I  don't  want  to  pry  if  you  have  your  reasons  for 
keeping  quiet.  Only  I  would  like  you  to  think 
of  Hilyer's  mental  health.  He  really  believes 
this  story." 

The  Angel  shrugged  his  dwindling  wings. 


198  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"You  did  not  know  him  before  this  affair. 
He's  changed  tremendously.  He  used  to  be 
neat  and  comfortable.  For  the  last  fortnight 
he's  been  hazy,  with  a  far-away  look  in  his  eyes. 
He  preached  last  Sunday  without  his  cuff  links, 
and  something  wrong  with  his  tie,  and  he  took 
for  his  text,  'Eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard.' 
He  really  believes  all  this  nonsense  about  the 
Angel-land.  The  man  is  verging  on  mono- 
mania ! " 

"You  will  see  things  from  your  own  stand- 
point," said  the  Angel. 

"  Every  one  must.  At  any  rate,  I  think  it  jolly 
regrettable  to  see  this  poor  old  fellow  hypnotised, 
as  you  certainly  have  hypnotised  him.  I  don't 
know  where  you  come  from  nor  who  you  are, 
but  I  warn  you  I'm  not  going  to  see  the  old 
boy  made  a  fool  of  much  longer." 

"But  he's  not  being  made  a  fool  of.  He's 
simply  beginning  to  dream  of  a  world  outside 
his  knowledge " 

"It  won't  do,"  said  Crump.  "I'm  not  one  of 
the  dupe  class.  You  are  either  of  two  things — • 
a  lunatic  at  large  (which  I  don't  believe),  or  a 
knave.  Nothing  else  is  possible.  I  think  I 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  199 

know  a  little  of  this  world,  whatever  I  do  of 
yours.  Very  well.  If  you  don't  leave  Hilyer 
alone  I  shall  communicate  with  the  police,  and 
either  clap  you  into  a  prison,  if  you  go  back  on 
your  story,  or  into  a  madhouse  if  you  don't.  It's 
stretching  a  point,  but  I  swear  I'd  certify  you 
insane  to-morrow  to  get  you  out  of  the  village. 
It's  not  only  the  Vicar.  As  you  know.  I  hope 
that's  plain.  Now  what  have  you  to  say?" 

"With  an  affectation  of  great  calm,  the  Doctor 
took  out  his  penknife  and  began  to  dig  the  blade 
into  his  pipe  bowl.  His  pipe  had  gone  out  during 
this  last  speech. 

For  a  moment  neither  spoke.  The  Angel 
looked  about  him  with  a  face  that  grew  pale. 
The  Doctor  extracted  a  plug  of  tobacco  from 
his  pipe  and  flung  it  away,  shut  his  penknife 
and  put  it  in  his  waistcoat  pocket.  He  had  not 
meant  to  speak  quite  so  emphatically,  but  speech 
always  warmed  him. 

"  Prison,"  said  the  Angel.  "  Madhouse !  Let 
me  see."  Then  he  remembered  the  Vicar's  ex- 
planation. "Not  that!"  he  said.  He  approached 
Crump  with  eyes  dilated  and  hands  outstretched. 

"I  knew  you  would  know  what  those  things 


200  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

meant — at  any  rate.  Sit  down,"  said  Crump,, 
indicating  the  tree  trunk  beside  him  by  a  move- 
ment of  the  head. 

The  Angel,  shivering,  sat  down  on  the  tree 
trunk  and  stared  at  the  Doctor. 

Crump  was  getting  out  his  pouch.  "You  are 
a  strange  man,"  said  the  Angel.  "Your  beliefs 
are  like  —  a  steel  trap." 

u  They  are,"  said  Crump  —  flattered. 

"But  I  tell  you  —  I  assure  you  the  thing  is 
so  —  I  know  nothing,  or  at  least  remember  noth- 
ing of  anything  I  knew  of  this  world  before 
I  found  myself  in  the  darkness  of  night  on  the 
moorland  above  Sidderford." 

"  Where  did  you  learn  the  language  then  ?  " 

"I  don't  know.  Only  I  tell  you—  But  I 
haven't  an  atom  of  the  sort  of  proof  that  would 
convince  you." 

44  And  you  really,"  said  Crump,  suddenly  com- 
ing round  upon  him  and  looking  into  his  eyes ; 
44  You  really  believe  you  were  eternally  in  a  kind 
of  glorious  heaven  before  then  ?  " 

44 1  do,"  said  the  Angel. 

"Pshaw!"  said  Crump,  and  lit  his  pipe.  He 
sat  smoking,  elbow  on  knee,  for  some  time,  and 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  201 

the  Angel  sat  and  watched  him.  Then  his  face 
grew  less  troubled. 

"It  is  just  possible,"  he  said  to  himself  rather 
than  to  the  Angel,  and  began  another  piece  of 
silence. 

"You  see;"  he  said,  when  that  was  finished. 
"  There  is  such  a  thing  as  double  personality.  .  .  . 
A  man  sometimes  forgets  who  he  is  and  thinks  he 
is  someone  else.  Leaves  home,  friends,  and  every- 
thing, and  leads  a  double  life.  There  was  a  case 
in  Nature  only  a  month  or  so  ago.  The  man  was. 
sometimes  English  and  right-handed,  and  some- 
times Welsh  and  left-handed.  When  he  was 
English  he  knew  no  Welsh,  when  he  was  Welsh 
he  knew  no  English.  .  .  .  H'm." 

He  turned  suddenly  on  the  Angel  and  said 
"  Home ! "  He  fancied  he  might  revive  in  the 
Angel  some  latent  memory  of  his  lost  youth. 
He  went  on  "  Dadda,  Pappa,  Daddy,  Mammy, 
Pappy,  Father,  Dad,  Governor,  Old  Boy,  Mother,, 
dear  Mother,  Ma,  Mumsy.  .  .  .  No  good  ?  What 
are  you  laughing  at?" 

"Nothing,"' said  the  Angel.  "You  surprised 
me  a  little,  —  that  is  all.  A  week  ago  I  should 
have  been  puzzled  by  that  vocabulary." 


202  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

For  a  minute  Crump  rebuked  the  Angel  silently 
out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye. 

"You  have  such  an  ingenuous  face.  You 
almost  force  me  to  believe  you.  You  are  cer- 
tainly not  an  ordinary  lunatic.  Your  mind  — 
except  for  your  isolation  from  the  past  —  seems 
balanced  enough.  I  wish  Nordau  or  Lombroso 
or  some  of  these  Saltpetriere  men  could  have  a 
look  at  you.  Down  here  one  gets  no  practice 
worth  speaking  about  in  mental  cases.  There's 
one  idiot  —  and  he's  just  a  damned  idiot  of  an 
idiot  — ;  all  the  rest  are  thoroughly  sane  people." 

"Possibly  that  accounts  for  their  behaviour," 
said  the  Angel  thoughtfully. 

"But  to  consider  your  general  position  here," 
said  Crump,  ignoring  his  comment,  "I  really 
regard  you  as  a  bad  influence  here.  These 
fancies  are  contagious.  It  is  not  simply  the 
Vicar.  There  is  a  man  named  Shine  has  caught 
the  fad,  and  he  has  been  in  the  drink  for  a  week, 
off  and  on,  and  offering  to  fight  anyone  who  says 
you  are  not  an  Angel.  Then  a  man  over  at 
Sidderford  is,  I  hear,  affected  with  a  kind  of 
religious  mania  on  the  same  tack.  These  things 
spread.  There  ought  to  be  a  quarantine  in  mis- 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  203 

chievous  ideas.  And  I  have  heard  another 
story.  .  .  ." 

"But  what  can  I  do?"  said  the  Angel. 
"Suppose  I  am  (quite  unintentionally)  doing 
mischief.  .  .  ." 

"  You  can  leave  the  village,"  said  Crump. 

44  Then  I  shall  only  go  into  another  village." 

44  That's  not  my  affair,"  said  Crump.  "  Go 
where  you  like.  Only  go.  Leave  these  three 
people,  the  Vicar,  Shine,  the  little  servant-girl, 
whose  heads  are  all  spinning  with  galaxies  of 
Angels.  .  .  ." 

"But,"  said  the  Angel,  "Face  your  world! 
I  tell  you  I  can't.  And  leave  Delia!  I  don't 
understand.  ...  I  do  not  know  how  to  set 
about  getting  Work  and  Food  and  Shelter.  And 
I  am  growing  afraid  of  human  beings.  .  .  ." 

44  Fancies,  fancies,"  said  Crump,  watching  him, 
44  mania." 

44  It's  no  good  my  persisting  in  worrying  you," 
he  said  suddenly,  "but  certainly  the  situation  is 
impossible  as  it  stands."  He  stood  up  with  a  jerk. 

"Good-morning,  Mr.  —  Angel,"  he  said,  "the 
long  and  the  short  of  it  is  —  I  say  it  as  the 
medical  adviser  of  this  parish — you  are  an 


204  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

unhealthy  influence.    We  can't  have  you.     You 
must  go." 

He  turned,  and  went  striding  through  the  grass 
towards  the  roadway,  leaving  the  Angel  sitting 
disconsolately  on  the  tree  trunk.  "  An  unhealthy 
influence,"  said  the  Angel  slowly,  staring  blankly 
in  front  of  him,  and  trying  to  realise  what  it 
meant. 


SIR  JOHN  GOTCH  ACTS. 
XLII. 

SIR  JOHN  GOTCH  was  a  little  man  with  scrubby 
hair,  a  small,  thin  nose  sticking  out  of  a  face 
cracked  with  wrinkles,  tight  brown  gaiters,  and  a 
riding  whip.  "I've  come,  you  see,"  he  said,  as 
Mrs.  Hinijer  closed  the  door. 

"  Thank  you,"  said  the  Vicar,  "  I'm  obliged  to 
you.  I'm  really  obliged  to  you." 

"Glad  to  be  of  any  service  to  you,"  said  Sir 
John  Gotch.  (Angular  attitude.) 

"  This  business,"  said  the  Vicar,  "  this  unfortu- 
nate business  of  the  barbed  wire  —  is  really,  you 
know,  a  most  unfortunate  business." 

Sir  John  Gotch  became  decidedly  more  angular 
in  his  attitude.  "  It  is,"  he  said. 

"  This  Mr.  Angel  being  my  guest  —  " 

"  No  reason  why  he  should  cut  my  wire,"  said 
Sir  John  Gotch,  briefly. 

"None  whatever." 

205 


206  THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

"May  I  ask  who  this  Mr.  Angel  is?"  asked 
Sir  John  Gotch  with  the  abruptness  of  long 
premeditation. 

The  Vicar's  fingers  jumped  to  his  chin.  What 
was  the  good  of  talking  to  a  man  like  Sir  John 
Gotch  about  Angels  ? 

"  To  tell  you  the  exact  truth,"  said  the  Vicar, 
*'  there  is  a  little  secret  —  " 

"Lady  Hammergallow  told  me  as  much." 

The  Vicar's  face  suddenly  became   bright  red. 

"  Do  you  know,"  said  Sir  John,  with  scarcely  a 
pause,  "he's  been  going  about  this  village  preach- 
ing Socialism?" 

"  Good  heavens ! "  said  the  Vicar,  "  No  !  " 

"  He  has.  He  has  been  buttonholing  every 
yokel  he  came  across,  and  asking  them  why  they 
had  to  work,  while  we  —  I  and  you,  you  know  — 
did  nothing.  He  has  been  saying  we  ought  to 
educate  every  man  up  to  your  level  and  mine  — 
out  of  the  rates,  I  suppose,  as  usual.  He  has 
been  suggesting  that  we  —  I  and  you,  you  know 
—  keep  these  people  down  —  pith  'em." 

"  Dear  me ! "  said  the  Vicar,  "  I  had  no  idea." 

"  He  has  done  this  wire-cutting  as  a  demonstra- 
tion, I  tell  you,  as  a  Socialistic  demonstration.  If 


THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT.  207 

we  don't  come  down  on  him  pretty  sharply,  I  tell 
you,  we  shall  have  the  palings  down  in  Flinders 
Lane  next,  and  the  next  thing  will  be  ricks  afire, 
and  every  damned  (I  beg  your  pardon,  Vicar.  I 
know  I'm  too  fond  of  that  word),  every  blessed 
pheasant's  egg  in  the  parish  smashed.  I  know 
these—" 

"A  Socialist,"  said  the  Vicar,  quite  put  out,  "I 
had  no  idea." 

"  You  see  why  I  am  inclined  to  push  matters 
against  our  gentleman  though  he  is  your  guest. 
It  seems  to  me  he  has  been  taking  advantage  of 
your  paternal  —  " 

"  Oh,  not  paternal ! "  said  the  Vicar.    "  Really — " 

"(I  beg  your  pardon,  Vicar  —  it  was  a  slip.) 
Of  your  kindness,  to  go  mischief-making  every- 
where, setting  class  against  class,  and  the  poor 
man  against  his  bread  and  butter." 

The  Vicar's  fingers  were  at  his  chin  again. 

"So  there's  one  of  two  things,"  said  Sir  John 
Gotch.  "Either  that  Guest  of  yours  leaves  the 
parish,  or  —  I  take  proceedings.  That's  final." 

The  Vicar's  mouth  was  all  askew. 

"That's  the  position,"  said  Sir  John,  jumping 
to  his  feet,  "  if  it  were  not  for  you,  I  should  take 


208  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

proceedings  at  once.       As  it  is  —  am  I  to  take 
proceedings  or  no  ?  " 

"You  see,"  said  the  Vicar  in  horrible  per- 
plexity. 

"Well?" 

"  Arrangements  have  to  be  made." 

"He's  a  mischief-making  idler.  ...  I  know 
the  breed.  But  I'll  give  you  a  week " 

"  Thank  you,"  said  the  Vicar.  "  I  understand 
your  position.  I  perceive  the  situation  is  getting 
intolerable.  .  .  ." 

"  Sorry  to  give  you  this  bother,  of  course,"  said 
Sir  John. 

"  A  week,"  said  the  Vicar. 

"  A  week,"  said  Sir  John,  leaving. 

The  Vicar  remained  sitting  before  his  desk  in 
his  study.  "  A  week  !  "  he  said  after  an  immense 
silence.  "  Here  is  an  Angel,  a  glorious  Angel, 
who  has  quickened  my  soul  to  beauty  and  delight, 
who  has  opened  my  eyes  to  Wonderland,  and 
something  more  than  Wonderland,  .  .  .  and  I 
have  promised  to  get  rid  of  him  in  a  week ! 
What  are  we  men  made  of  ?  .  .  .  How  can  I  tell 
him?" 

He  began  to  walk  up   and  down  the   room, 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  209 

then  he  went  into  the  dining-room,  and  stood 
staring  blankly  out  at  the  cornfield.  The  table 
was  already  laid  for  lunch.  Presently  he  turned, 
still  dreaming,  and  almost  mechanically  helped 
himself  to  a  glass  of  sherry. 


THE  SEA  CLIFF. 
XLIII. 

THE  Angel  lay  upon  the  summit  of  the  cliff 
above  Bandram  Bay,  and  stared  out  at  the 
glittering  sea.  Sheer  from  under  his  elbows  fell 
the  cliff,  five  hundred  and  seven  feet  of  it  down 
to  the  datum  line,  and  the  sea-birds  eddied  and 
soared  below  him.  The  upper  part  of  the  cliff 
was  a  greenish  chalky  rock,  the  lower  two-thirds 
a  warm  red,  marbled  with  gypsum  bands,  and 
from  half-a-dozen  places  spurted  jets  of  water,  to 
fall  in  long  cascades  down  its  face.  The  swell 
frothed  white  on  the  flinty  beach,  and  the  water 
beyond  where  the  shadows  of  an  outstanding 
rock  lay,  was  green  and  purple  in  a  thousand 
tints  and  marked  with  streaks  and  flakes  of  foam. 
The  air  was  full  of  sunlight  and  the  tinkling  of 
the  little  waterfalls  and  the  slow  soughing  of 
the  seas  below.  Now  and  then  a  butterfly 
flickered  over  the  face  of  the  cliff,  and  a  multi- 

210 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  211 

tude  of  sea-birds  perched  and  flew  hither  and 
thither. 

The  Angel  lay  with  his  crippled,  shrivelled 
wings  humped  upon  his  back,  watching  the  gulls 
and  jackdaws  and  rooks,  circling  in  the  sunlight, 
soaring,  eddying,  sweeping  down  to  the  water  or 
upward  into  the  dazzling  blue  of  the  sky.  Long 
the  Angel  lay  there  and  watched  them  going  to  and 
fro  on  outspread  wings.  He  watched,  and  as  he 
watched  them  he  remembered  with  infinite  long- 
ing the  rivers  of  starlight  and  the  sweetness  of 
the  land  from  which  he  came.  And  a  gull  came 
gliding  overhead,  swiftly  and  easily,  with  its  broad 
wings  spreading  white  and  fair  against  the  blue. 
And  suddenly  a  shadow  came  into  the  Angel's 
eyes,  the  sunlight  left  them,  he  thought  of  his  own 
crippled  pinions,  and  put  his  face  upon  his  arm 
and  wept. 

A  woman  who  was  walking  along  the  footpath 
across  the  Cliff  Field  saw  only  a  twisted  hunch- 
back dressed  in  the  Vicar  of  Siddermorton's 
cast-off  clothes,  sprawling  foolishly  at  the  edge 
of  the  cliff  and  with  his  forehead  on  his  arm. 
She  looked  at  him  and  looked  again.  "The 
silly  creature  has  gone  to  sleep,"  she  said,  and 


212  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

though  she  had  a  heavy  basket  to  carry,  came 
towards  him  with  an  idea  of  waking  him  up. 
But  as  she  drew  near  she  saw  his  shoulders  heave 
and  heard  the  sound  of  his  sobbing. 

She  stood  still  a  minute,  and  her  features 
twitched  into  a  kind  of  grin.  Then  treading 
softly  she  turned  and  went  back  towards  the 
pathway.  "Tis  so  hard  to  think  of  anything 
to  say,"  she  said.  "  Poor  afflicted  soul !  " 

Presently  the  Angel  ceased  sobbing,  and  stared 
with  a  tear-stained  face  at  the  beach  below  him. 

"  This  world,"  he  said,  "  wraps  me  round  and 
swallows  me  up.  My  wings  grow  shrivelled  and 
useless.  Soon  I  shall  be  nothing  more  than  a 
crippled  man,  and  I  shall  age,  and  bow  myself  to 
pain,  and  die.  ...  I  am  miserable.  And  I  am 
alone." 

Then  he  rested  his  chin  on  his  hands  upon  the 
edge  of  the  cliff,  and  began  to  think  of  Delia's 
face  with  the  light  in  her  eyes.  The  Angel  felt 
a  curious  desire  to  go  to  her  and  tell  her  of  his 
withered  wings.  To  place  his  arms  about  her  and 
weep  for  the  land  he  had  lost.  "  Delia ! "  he  said 
to  himself  very  softly.  And  presently  a  cloud 
drove  in  front  of  the  sun. 


MBS.  HINIJER  ACTS. 
XLIV. 

MRS.  HINIJER  surprised  the  Vicar  by  tapping 
at  his  study  door  after  tea.  "Begging  your  par- 
don, Sir,"  said  Mrs.  Hinijer.  "  But  might  I  make 
so  bold  as  to  speak  to  you  for  a  moment?  " 

"  Certainly,  Mrs.  Hinijer,"  said  the  Vicar,  little 
dreaming  of  the  blow  that  was  coming.  He  held 
a  letter  in  his  hand,  a  very  strange  and  disagree- 
able letter  from  his  bishop,  a  letter  that  irritated 
and  distressed  him,  criticising  in  the  strongest 
language  the  guests  he  chose  to  entertain  in  his 
own  house.  Only  a  popular  bishop  living  in  a 
democratic  age,  a  bishop  who  was  still  half  a 
pedagogue,  could  have  written  such  a  letter. 

Mrs.  Hinijer  coughed  behind  her  hand  and 
struggled  with  some  respiratory  disorganisation. 
The  Vicar  fel't  apprehensive.  Usually  in  their 
interviews  he  was  the  most  disconcerted.  Invari- 
ably so  when  the  interview  ended. 

213 


214  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Well?  "he  said. 

"  May  I  make  so  bold,  sir,  as  to  arst  when  Mr. 
Angel  is  a-going  ?  "  (Cough.) 

The  Vicar  started.  "  To  ask  when  Mr.  Angel 
is  going?"  he  repeated  slowly  to  gain  time. 
"Another!" 

"I'm  sorry,  sir.  But  I've  been  used  to  waitin' 
on  gentlefolks,  sir ;  and  you'd  hardly  imagine  how 
it  feels  quite  to  wait  on  such  as  'im." 

"Such  as  ...  'im!  Do  I  understand  you, 
Mrs.  Hinijer,  that  you  don't  like  Mr.  Angel?" 

"  You  see,  sir,  before  I  came  to  you,  sir,  I  was 
at  Lord  Dundoller's  seventeen  years,  and  you,  sir 
— if  you  will  excuse  me  —  are  a  perfect  gentle- 
man yourself,  sir  —  though  in  the  Church.  And 
then  .  .  ." 

"  Dear,  dear ! "  said  the  Vicar.  "  And  don't 
you  regard  Mr.  Angel  as  a  gentleman?" 

"I'm  sorry  to  'ave  to  say  it,  sir." 

"  But  what  .  .  .  ?     Dear  me  !     Surely ! " 

"  I'm  sorry  to  'ave  to  say  it,  sir.  But  when  a 
party  goes  turning  vegetarian  suddenly  and  put- 
ting out  all  the  cooking,  and  hasn't  no  proper 
luggage  of  his  own,  and  borry's  shirts  and  socks 
from  his  'ost,  and  don't  know  no  better  than  to 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  215 

try  his  knife  at  peas  (as  I  seed  my  very  self),  and 
goes  talking  in  odd  corners  to  the  housemaids, 
and  folds  up  his  napkin  after  meals,  and  eats 
with  his  fingers  at  minced  veal,  and  plays  the 
fiddle  in  the  middle  of  the  night  keeping  every- 
body awake,  and  stares  and  grins  at  his  elders 
a-getting  upstairs,  and  generally  misconducts  him- 
self with  things  that  I  can  scarcely  tell  you  all, 
one  can't  help  thinking,  sir.  Thought  is  free,  sir, 
and  one  can't  help  coming  to  one's  own  conclu- 
sions. Besides  which,  there  is  talk  all  over  the 
village  about  him  —  what  with  one  thing  and 
another.  I  know  a  gentleman  when  I  sees  a 
gentleman,  and  I  know  a  gentleman  when  I  don't 
see  a  gentleman,  and  me,  and  Susan,  and  George, 
we've  talked  it  over,  being  the  upper  servants, 
so  to  speak,  and  experienced,  and  leaving  out 
that  girl  Delia,  who  I  only  hope  won't  come  to 
any  harm  through  him,  and  depend  upon  it,  sir, 
that  Mr.  Angel  ain't  what  you  think  he  is, 
sir,  and  the  sooner  he  leaves  this  house  the 
better." 

Mrs.  Hinijer  ceased  abruptly  and  stood  panting 
but  stern,  and  with  her  eyes  grimly  fixed  on 
the  Vicar's  face. 


216  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"Realty,  Mrs.  Hinijer!"  said  the  Vicar,  and 
then,  "Oh  Lord!" 

"  What  have  I  done  ?  "  said  the  Vicar,  suddenly 
starting  up  and  appealing  to  the  inexorable  fates. 
"What  HAVE  I  done?" 

"There's  no  knowing,"  said  Mrs.  Hinijer. 
"Though  a  deal  of  talk  in  the  village." 

"Bother!"  said  the  Vicar,  going  and  staring 
out  of  the  window.  Then  he  turned.  "Look 
here,  Mrs.  Hinijer!  Mr.  Angel  will  be  leaving 
this  house  in  the  course  of  a  week.  Is  that 
enough  ?  " 

"  Quite,"  said  Mrs.  Hinijer.  "  And  I  feel  sure, 
sir  .  .  ." 

The  Vicar's  eyes  fell  with  unwonted  eloquence 
upon  the  door. 


THE  ANGEL  IN  TROUBLE. 
XLV. 

"THE  fact  is,"  said  the  Vicar,  "this  is  no  world 
for  Angels." 

The  blinds  had  not  been  drawn,  and  the  twi- 
light outer  world  under  an  overcast  sky  seemed 
unspeakably  grey  and  cold.  The  Angel  sat  at 
table  in  dejected  silence.  His  inevitable  de- 
parture had  been  proclaimed.  Since  his  presence 
hurt  people  and  made  the  Vicar  wretched  he 
acquiesced  in  the  justice  of  the  decision,  but  what 
would  happen  to  him  after  his  plunge  he  could  not 
imagine.  Something  very  disagreeable  certainly. 

"There  is  the  violin,"  said  the  Vicar.  "Only 
after  our  experience " 

"  I  must  get  you  clothes  —  a  general  outfit 

Dear  me !  you  don't  understand  railway  travel- 
ling !  And  coinage !  Taking  lodgings  !  Eating- 
houses  ! '  I  must  come  up  at  least  and  see 

you  settled.     Get  work  for  you.     But  an  Angel 

in  London !     Working  for  his  living  !     That  grey 

217 


218  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

cold  wilderness  of  people!  What  will  become 

of  you  ? If  I  had  one  friend  in  the  world 

I  could  trust  to  believe  me ! " 

"I  ought  not  to  be  sending  you  away " 

"  Do  not  trouble  overmuch  for  me,  my  friend," 
said  the  Angel.  "  At  least  this  life  of  yours  ends. 
And  there  are  things  in  it.  There  is  something 

in  this  life  of  yours Your  care  for  me  !  I 

thought  there  was  nothing  beautiful  at  all  in 
life " 

"  And  I  have  betrayed  you ! "  said  the  Vicar, 
with  a  sudden  wave  of  remorse.  "  Why  did  I 
not  face  them  all  —  say,  '  This  is  the  best  of  life  '  ? 
What  do  these  everyday  things  matter?" 

He  stopped  suddenly.  "What  do  they  matter?" 
he  said. 

"  I  have  only  come  into  your  life  to  trouble  it," 
said  the  Angel. 

"  Don't  say  that,"  said  the  Vicar.  "  You  have 
come  into  my  life  to  awaken  me.  I  have  been  dream- 
ing —  dreaming.  Dreaming  this  was  necessary  and 
that.  Dreaming  that  this  narrow  prison  was  the 
world.  And  the  dream  still  hangs  about  me  and 
troubles  me.  That  is  all.  Even  your  departure 
Am  I  not  dreaming  that  you  must  go  ?  " 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  219 

When  he  was  in  bed  that  night  the  mystical 
aspect  of  the  case  came  still  more  forcibly  before 
the  Vicar.  He  lay  awake  and  had  the  most 
horrible  visions  of  his  sweet  and  delicate  visitor 
drifting  through  this  unsympathetic  world  and 
happening  upon  the  cruellest  misadventures.  His 
guest  was  an  Angel  assuredly.  He  tried  to  go 
over  the  whole  story  of  the  past  eight  days  again. 
He  thought  of  the  hot  afternoon,  the  shot  fired 
out  of  sheer  surprise,  the  fluttering  iridescent 
wings,  the  beautiful  saffron-robed  figure  upon 
the  ground.  How  wonderful  that  had  seemed 
to  him !  Then  his  mind  turned  to  the  things  he 
had  heard  of  the  other  world,  to  the  dreams 
the  violin  had  conjured  up,  to  the  vague,  fluct- 
uating, wonderful  cities  of  the  Angelic  Land. 
He  tried  to  recall  the  forms  of  the  buildings,  the 
shapes  of  the  fruits  upon  the  trees,  the  aspect  of 
the  winged  shapes  that  traversed  its  ways.  They 
grew  from  a  memory  into  a  present  reality,  grew 
every  moment  just  a  little  more  vivid  and  his 
troubles  a  little  less  immediate ;  and  so,  softly 
and  quietly,  the  Vicar  slipped  out  of  his  troubles 
and  perplexities  into  the  Land  of  Dreams. 


THE  ANGEL  IN  TROUBLE  —  continued. 
XLVI. 

DELIA  sat  with  her  window  open,  hoping  to 
hear  the  Angel  play.  But  that  night  there  was 
to  be  no  playing.  The  sky  was  overcast,  yet 
not  so  thickly  but  that  the  moon  was  visible. 
High  up  a  broken  cloud-lace  drove  across  the 
sky,  and  now  the  moon  was  a  hazy  patch  of  light, 
and  now  it  was  darkened,  and  now  rode  clear 
and  bright  and  sharply  outlined  against  the  blue 
gulf  of  night.  And  presently  she  heard  the  door 
into  the  garden  opening,  and  a  figure  came  out 
tinder  the  drifting  pallor  of  the  moonlight. 

It  was  the  Angel.  But  he  wore  once  more 
the  saffron  robe  in  the  place  of  his  formless  over- 
coat. In  the  uncertain  light  this  garment  had 
only  a  colourless  shimmer,  and  his  wings  behind 
him  seemed  a  leaden  grey.  He  began  taking 
short  runs,  flapping  his  wings  and  leaping,  going 

220 


THE   WONDEBFUL  VISIT.  221 

to  and  fro  amidst  the  drifting  patches  of  light 
and  the  shadows  of  the  trees.  Delia  watched 
him  in  amazement.  He  gave  a  despondent  cry, 
leaping  higher.  His  shrivelled  wings  flashed 
and  fell.  A  thicker  patch  in  the  cloud-film  made 
everything  obscure.  He  seemed  to  spring  five 
or  six  feet  from  the  ground  and  fall  clumsily. 
She  saw  him  in  the  dimness  crouching  on  the 
ground  and  then  she  heard  him  sobbing. 

"  He's  hurt ! "  said  Delia,  pressing  her  lips  to- 
gether hard  and  staring.  "  I  ought  to  help  him." 

She  hesitated,  then  stood  up  and  flitted  swiftly 
towards  the  door,  went  slipping  quietly  down- 
stairs and  out  into  the  moonlight.  The  Angel 
still  lay  upon  the  lawn,  and  sobbed  for  utter 
wretchedness. 

"Oh!  what  is  the  matter?"  said  Delia,  stoop- 
ing over  him  and  touching  his  head  timidly. 

The  Angel  ceased  sobbing,  set  up  abruptly, 
and  stared  at  her.  He  saw  her  face,  moonlit, 
and  soft  with  pity.  "  What  is  the  matter  ?  "  she 
whispered.  "  Are  you  hurt  ?  " 

The  Angel  stared  about  him,  and  his  eyes 
came  to  rest  on  her  face.  "  Delia ! "  he  whispered. 

"Are  you  hurt?"  said  Delia. 


222  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"My  wings,"  said  the  Angel.  "I  cannot  use 
my  wings." 

Delia  did  not  understand,  but  she  realised  that 
it  was  something  very  dreadful.  "It  is  dark,  it 
is  cold,"  said  the  Angel;  "I  cannot  use  my 
wings." 

It  hurt  her  unaccountably  to  see  the  tears  on 
his  face.  She  did  not  know  what  to  do. 

"Pity  me,  Delia,"  said  the  Angel,  suddenly 
extending  his  arms  towards  her ;  "  pity  me." 

Impulsively  she  knelt  down  and  took  his  face 
between  her  hands.  "I  do  not  know,"  she  said; 
*'  but  I  am  sorry.  I  am  sorry  for  you,  with  all  my 
heart." 

The  Angel  said  not  a  word.  He  was  looking  at 
her  little  face  in  the  bright  moonlight,  with  an  ex- 
pression of  uncomprehending  wonder  in  his  eyes. 
"  This  strange  world  I  "  he  said. 

She  suddenly  withdrew  her  hands.  A  cloud 
drove  over  the  moon.  "  What  can  I  do  to  help 
you?"  she  whispered.  "I  would  do  anything  to 
help  you." 

He  still  held  her  at  arm's  length,  perplexity 
replacing  misery  in  his  face.  "  This  strange 
world!"  he  repeated. 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  22$ 

Both  whispered,  she  kneeling,  he  sitting,  in 
the  fluctuating  moonlight  and  darkness  of  the 
lawn. 

"  Delia ! "  said  Mrs.  Hinijer,  suddenly  project- 
ing from  her  window ;  "  Delia,  is  that  you  ?  " 

They  both  looked  up  at  her  window  in  con- 
sternation. 

"Come  in  at  once,  Delia,"  said  Mrs.  Hinijer* 
"If  that  Mr.  Angel  was  a  gentleman  (which  he 
isn't),  he'd  feel  ashamed  of  hisself.  And  you  an 
orphan  tool" 


THE  LAST  DAY  OF  THE  VISIT. 
XL  VII. 

ON  the  morning  of  the  next  day  the  Angel, 
after  he  had  breakfasted,  went  out  towards  the 
moor,  and  Mrs.  Hinijer  had  an  interview  with 
the  Vicar.  What  happened  need  not  concern  us 
now.  The  Vicar  was  visibly  disconcerted.  "  He 
must  go,"  he  said;  "certainly  he  must  go,"  and 
straightway  he  forgot  the  particular  accusation 
in  the  general  trouble.  He  spent  the  morning 
in  hazy  meditation,  interspersed  by  a  spasmodic 
study  of  Skiff  and  Waterlow's  price  list,  and 
the  catalogue  of  the  Medical,  Scholastic,  and 
Clerical  Stores.  A  schedule  grew  slowly  on  a 
sheet  of  paper  that  lay  on  the  desk  before  him. 
He  cut  out  a  self-measurement  form  from  the 
tailoring  department  of  the  Stores  and  pinned 
it  to  the  study  curtains.  This  was  the  kind  of 
document  he  was  making: 

"1  Black  Melton  Frock  Coat,    pattsf     £3,  10s. 

"£   Trousers.     2  pairs  or  one. 
224 


THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT.  225 

"1  Cheviot  Tweed  Suit  (write  for  patterns. 
Self-meas.  f)  " 

The  Vicar  spent  some  time  studying  a  pleasing 
army  of  model  gentlemen.  They  were  all  very 
nice-looking,  but  he  found  it  hard  to  imagine  the 
Angel  so  transfigured.  For,  although  six  days 
had  passed,  the  Angel  remained  without  any  suit 
of  his  own.  The  Vicar  had  vacillated  between  a 
project  of  driving  the  Angel  into  Portburdock 
and  getting  him  measured  for  a  suit,  and  his 
absolute  horror  of  the  insinuating  manners  of 
the  tailor  he  employed.  He  knew  that  tailor 
would  demand  an  exhaustive  explanation.  Be- 
sides which,  one  never  knew  when  the  Angel 
might  leave.  So  the  six  days  had  passed,  and  the 
Angel  had  grown  steadily  in  the  wisdom  of  this 
world  and  shrouded  his  brightness  still  in  the 
ample  retirement  of  the  Vicar's  newest  clothes. 

"1  Soft  Felt  Hat,  No.  a.  1  («ay),  8*  6d. 

« 1  Silk  Hat,  14s  Qd.     Hatbox  ?  " 

("I  suppose  he  ought  to  have  a  silk  hat," 
said  the  Vicar ;  "  it's  the  correct  thing  up  there. 
Shape  No.  3  seems  best  suited  to  his  style.  But 
it's  dreadful  to  think  of  him  all  alone  in  that 
great  city.  Everyone  will  misunderstand  him, 


226  THE   WONDERFUL   VISIT. 

and  he  will  misunderstand  everybody.     However, 
I  suppose  it  must  be.     Where  was  I  ?  ") 

"1  Toothbrush.     1  Brush  and  Comb.     Razor  f 

"  £  doz.  Shirts  (?  measure  his  neck*),  6s  ea. 

"Socks?     Pants  f 

"  2  suits  Pyjamas.     Price  f     Say  15s. 

"1  doz.  Collars  QThe  Life  Guardsman'),  8s. 

"Braces.      Oxon  Patent  Versatile,  Is  11  Jd." 
("But  how   will   he   get    them    on?"    said    the 
Vicar.) 

"  1  Rubber  Stamp,  T.  Angel,  and  Marking  Ink 
in  box  complete,  9d. 

"  Those  washerwomen  are  certain  to  steal  all 
his  things." 

"1  Single-blade  Penknife  with  Corkscrew,  say 
Is6d. 

"N.B.  —  Dorft  fo~get  Cuff  Links,  Collar  Stud, 
£c."  (The  Vicar  loved  "&c.",  it  gave  things 
such  a  precise  and  business-like  air.) 

"1  Leather  Portmanteau  (had  better  see  these)" 

And  so  forth — meanderingly.  It  kept  the  Vicar 
busy  until  lunch  time,  though  his  heart  ached. 

The  Angel  did  not  return  to  lunch.  This  was 
not  so  very  remarkable  —  once  before  he  had 
missed  the  midday  meal.  Yet,  considering  how 


THE  WONDERFUL   VISIT.  227 

short  was  the  time  they  would  have  together  now, 
he  might  perhaps  have  come  back.  Doubtless 
he  has  excellent  reasons,  though,  for  his  absence. 
The  Vicar  made  an  indifferent  lunch.  In  the 
afternoon  he  rested  in  his  usual  manner,  and  did 
a  little  more  to  the  list  of  requirements.  He  did 
not  begin  to  feel  nervous  about  the  Angel  till  tea- 
time.  He  waited,  perhaps,  half  an  hour  before 
he  took  tea.  "  Odd,"  said  the  Vicar,  feeling  still 
more  lonely  as  he  drank  his  tea. 

As  the  time  for  dinner  crept  on  and  no  Angel 
appeared  the  Vicar's  imagination  began  to  trouble 
him.  "  He  will  come  in  to  dinner,  surely,"  said 
the  Vicar,  caressing  his  chin,  and  beginning  to 
fret  about  the  house  upon  inconsiderable  errands, 
as  his  habit  was  when  anything  occurred  to  break 
his  routine.  The  sun  set,  a  gorgeous  spectacle, 
amidst  tumbled  masses  of  purple  cloud.  The 
gold  and  red  faded  into  twilight;  the  evening 
star  gathered  her  robe  of  light  together  from  out 
the  brightness  of  the  sky  in  the  West.  Breaking 
the  silence  of  evening  that  crept  over  the  outer 
world,  a  corncrake  began  his  whirring  chant. 
The  Vicar's  face  grew  troubled;  twice  he  went 
and  stared  at  the  darkening  hillside,  and  then 


228  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

fretted  back  to  the  house  again.  Mrs.  Hinijer 
served  dinner.  "  Your  dinner's  ready,"  she  an- 
nounced for  the  second  time,  with  a  reproachful 
intonation.  "Yes,  yes,"  said  the  Vicar,  fussing 
off  upstairs. 

He  came  down  and  went  into  his  study  and  lit 
his  reading  lamp,  a  patent  affair  with  an  incan- 
descent wick,  dropping  the  match  into  his  waste- 
paper  basket  without  stopping  to  see  if  it  was 
extinguished.  Then  he  fretted  into  the  dining- 
room  and  began  a  desultory  attack  on  the  cooling 
dinner  .  .  . 

(Dear  Reader,  the  time  is  almost  ripe  to  say 
farewell  to  this  little  Vicar  of  ours.) 


THE  LAST  DAY  OF  THE  VISIT  —  continued. 
XLVIII. 

SIB  JOHN  GOTCH  (still  smarting  over  the  busi- 
ness of  the  barbed  wire)  was  riding  along  one  of 
the  grassy  ways  through  the  preserves  by  the 
Bidder,  when  he  saw,  strolling  slowly  through  the 
trees  beyond  the  undergrowth,  the  one  particular 
human  being  he  did  not  want  to  see. 

"I'm  damned,"  said  Sir  John  Gotch,  with 
immense  emphasis;  "if  this  isn't  altogether  too 
much." 

He  raised  himself  in  the  stirrups.  "  Hi ! "  he 
shouted.  "  You  there ! " 

The  Angel  turned  smiling. 

"  Get  out  of  this  wood !  "  said  Sir  John  Gotch. 

"  Why  f  "  said  the  Angel. 

"  I'm ,"  said  Sir  John  Gotch,  meditating 

some  cataclysmal  expletive.  But  he  could  think 
of  nothing  more  than  "damned."  "Get  out  of 
this  wood,"  he  said. 


230  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

The  Angel's  smile  vanished.  "Why  should  I 
get  out  of  this  wood?"  he  said,  and  stood  still. 

,  Neither  spoke  for  a  full  half  minute  perhaps, 
and  then  Sir  John  Gotch  dropped  out  of  his  saddle 
and  stood  by  the  horse. 

(Now  you  must  remember  —  lest  the  Angelic 
Hosts  be  discredited  hereby  —  that  this  Angel  had 
been  breathing  the  poisonous  air  of  this  Struggle 
for  Existence  of  ours  for  more  than  a  week.  It 
was  not  only  his  wings  and  the  brightness  of  his 
face  that  suffered.  He  had  eaten  and  slept  and 
learnt  the  lesson  of  pain  —  had  travelled  so  far  on 
the  road  to  humanity.  All  the  length  of  his  Visit 
he  had  been  meeting  more  and  more  of  the  harsh- 
ness and  conflict  of  this  world,  and  losing  touch 
with  the  glorious  altitudes  of  his  own.) 

"  You  won't  go,  eigh ! "  said  Gotch,  and  began 
to  lead  his  horse  through  the  bushes  towards  the 
Angel.  The  Angel  stood,  all  his  muscles  tight 
and  his  nerves  quivering,  watching  his  antagonist 
approach. 

"  Get  out  of  this  wood,"  said  Gotch,  stopping 
three  yards  away,  his  face  white  with  rage,  his 
bridle  in  one  hand  and  his  riding  whip  in  the  other. 

Strange  floods  of  emotion  were  running  through 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  231 

the  Angel.  "Who  are  you,"  he  said,  in  a  low 
quivering  voice;  "who  am  I — that  you  should 
order  me  out  of  this  place  ?  What  has  the  World 
done  that  men  like  you  .  .  ." 

"You're  the  fool  who  cut  my  barbed  wire,"  said 
Gotch,  threatening,  "  if  you  want  to  know !  " 

"  Your  barbed  wire,"  said  the  Angel.  "Was 
that  your  barbed  wire?  Are  you  the  man  who 
put  down  that  barbed  wire?  What  right  have 
you  .  .  ." 

"  Don't  you  go  talking  Socialist  rot,"  said  Gotch 
in  short  gasps.  "  This  wood's  mine,  and  I've  a 
right  to  protect  it  how  I  can.  I  know  your  kind 
of  muck.  Talking  rot  and  stirring  up  discontent. 
And  if  you  don't  get  out  of  it  jolly  sharp  .  .  ." 

"Well!"  said  the  Angel,  a  brimming  reservoir 
of  unaccountable  energy. 

"  Get  out  of  this  damned  wood ! "  said  Gotch, 
flashing  into  the  bully  out  of  sheer  alarm  at  the 
light  in  the  Angel's  face. 

He  made  one  step  towards  him,  with  the  whip 
raised,  and  then  something  happened  that  neither 
he  nor  the  •  Angel  properly  understood.  The 
Angel  seemed  to  leap  into  the  air,  a  pair  of  grey 
wings  flashed  out  at  the  Squire,  he  saw  a  face 


232  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

bearing  down  upon  him,  full  of  the  wild  beauty  of 
passionate  anger.  His  riding  whip  was  torn  out 
of  his  hand.  His  horse  reared  behind  him,  pulled 
him  over,  gained  his  bridle  and  fled. 

The  whip  cut  across  his  face  as  he  fell  back, 
stung  across  his  face  again  as  he  sat  on  the 
ground.  He  saw  the  Angel,  radiant  with  anger, 
in  the  act  to  strike  again.  Gotch  flung  up  his 
hands,  pitched  himself  forward  to  save  his  eyes, 
and  rolled  on  the  ground  under  the  pitiless  fury 
of  the  blows  that  rained  down  upon  him. 

"You  brute,"  cried  the  Angel,  striking  wherever 
he  saw  flesh  to  feel.  "  You  bestial  thing  of  pride 
and  lies !  You  who  have  overshadowed  the  souls 
of  other  men.  You  shallow  fool  with  your  horses 
and  dogs !  To  lift  your  face  against  any  living 
thing !  Learn !  Learn  !  Learn ! " 

Gotch  began  screaming  for  help.  Twice  he 
tried  to  clamber  to  his  feet,  got  to  his  knees,  and 
went  headlong  again  under  the  ferocious  anger 
of  the  Angel.  Presently  he  made  a  strange 
noise  in  his  throat,  and  ceased  even  to  writhe 
under  his  punishment. 

Then  suddenly  the  Angel  awakened  from  his 
wrath,  and  found  himself  standing,  panting  and 


THE    WONDERFUL   VISIT.  23$ 

trembling,  one  foot  on  a  motionless  figure,  under 
the  green  stillness  of  the  sunlit  woods. 

He  stared  about  him,  then  down  at  his  feet 
where,  among  the  tangled  dead  leaves,  the  hair 
was  matted  with  blood.  The  whip  dropped  from 
his  hands,  the  hot  colour  fled  from  his  face. 
"Paw/"  he  said.  "Why  does  he  lie  so  still?" 

He  took  his  foot  off  Gotch's  shoulder,  bent 
down  towards  the  prostrate  figure,  stood  listen- 
ing, knelt  —  shook  him.  "  Awake  !  "  said  the 
Angel.  Then  still  more  softly,  "  Awake  !  " 

He  remained  listening  some  minutes  or  more, 
stood  up  sharply,  and  looked  round  him  at  the 
silent  trees.  A  feeling  of  profound  horror  De- 
scended upon  him,  wrapped  him  round  about. 
With  an  abrupt  gesture  he  turned.  "What  has 
happened  to  me  ? "  he  said,  in  an  awe-stricken 
whisper. 

He  started  back  from  the  motionless  figure. 
"  Dead ! "  he  said  suddenly,  and  turning,  panic- 
stricken,  fled  headlong  through  the  wood. 


THE  LAST  DAY  OP  THE  VISIT — continued. 
XLIX. 

So  the  Angel,  thinking  that  Gotch  was  dead, 
went  wandering  off  in  a  passion  of  remorse  and 
fear  through  the  brakes  and  copses  along  the 
Sidder.  You  can  scarcely  imagine  how  appalled 
he  was  at  this  last  and  overwhelming  proof  of 
his  encroaching  humanity.  All  the  darkness, 
passion  and  pain  of  life  seemed  closing  in  upon 
him,  inexorably,  becoming  part  of  him,  chaining 
him  to  all  that  a  week  ago  he  had  found  strange 
and  pitiful  in  men. 

"  Truly,  this  is  no  world  for  an  Angel ! "  said 
the  Angel.  "It  is  a  World  of  War,  a  World 
of  Pain,  a  World  of  Death.  Anger  comes  upon 
one  ...  I,  who  know  not  pain  and  anger,  stand 
here  with  blood  stains  on  my  hands.  I  have 
fallen.  To  come  into  this  world  is  to  fall.  One 
must  hunger  and  thirst  and  be  tormented  with 
a  thousand  desires.  One  must  fight  for  foothold, 

be  angry  and  strike " 

234 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT.  235 

He  lifted  up  his  hands  to  Heaven,  the  ultimate 
bitterness  of  helpless  remorse  in  his  face,  and 
then  flung  them  down  with  a  gesture  of  despair. 
The  prison  walls  of  this  narrow  passionate  life 
seemed  creeping  in  upon  him,  certainly  and 
steadily,  to  crush  him  presently  altogether.  He 
felt  what  all  we  poor  mortals  have  to  feel  sooner 
or  later  —  the  pitiless  force  of  the  Things  that 
Must  Be,  not  only  without  us  but  (where  the  real 
trouble  lies)  within,  all  the  inevitable  tormenting 
of  one's  high  resolves,  those  inevitable  seasons 
when  the  better  self  is  forgotten.  But  with  us 
it  is  a  gentle  descent,  made  by  imperceptible 
degrees  over  a  long  space  of  years ;  with  him 
it  was  the  horrible  discovery  of  one  short  week. 
He  felt  he  was  being  crippled,  caked  over, 
blinded,  stupefied  in  the  wrappings  of  this  life, 
he  felt  as  a  man  might  feel  who  has  taken  some 
horrible  poison,  and  feels  destruction  spreading 
within  him. 

He  took  no  account  of  hunger  or  fatigue  or 
the  flight  of  time.  On  and  on  he  went,  avoiding 
houses  and  roads,  turning  away  from  the  sight 
and  sotind  of  a  human  being  in  a  wordless  des- 
perate argument  with  Fate.  His  thoughts  did 


236  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

riot  flow  but  stood  banked  back  in  inarticulate 
remonstrance  against  his  degradation.  Chance 
directed  his  footsteps  homeward  and,  at  last,  after 
nightfall,  he  found  himself  faint  and  weary  and 
wretched,  stumbling  along  over  the  moor  at  the 
back  of  Siddermorton.  He  heard  the  rats  run 
and  squeal  in  the  heather,  and  once  a  noiseless 
big  bird  came  out  of  the  darkness,  passed,  and 
vanished  again.  And  he  saw  without  noticing  it 
a  dull  red  glow  in  the  sky  before  him. 


THE  LAST  DAY  OF  THE  VISIT — continued. 
L. 

BUT  when  he  came  over  the  brow  of  the  moor, 
a  vivid  light  sprang  up  before  him  and  refused 
to  be  ignored.  He  came  on  down  the  hill  and 
speedily  saw  more  distinctly  what  the  glare  was. 
It  came  from  darting  and  trembling  tongues  of 
fire,  golden  and  red,  that  shot  from  the  windows 
and  a  hole  in  the  roof  of  the  Vicarage.  A  cluster 
of  black  heads,  all  the  village  in  fact,  except  the 
fire-brigade  —  who  were  down  at  Aylmer's  Cottage 
trying  to  find  the  key  of  the  machine-house  — 
came  out  in  silhouette  against  the  blaze.  There 
was  a  roaring  sound,  and  a  humming  of  voices, 
and  presently  a  furious  outcry.  There  was  a 
shouting  of  "No!  No!"  —  "Come  back!"  and 
an  inarticulate  roar. 

He  began  to  run  towards  the  burning  house. 
He  stumbled  and  almost  fell,  but  he  ran  on.  He 
found  black  figures  running  about  him.  The 

237 


238  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

flaring  fire  blew  gustily  this  way  and  that,  and 
he  smelt  the  smell  of  burning. 

"  She  went  in,"  said  one  voice,  "  she  went  in." 

"  The  mad  girl ! "  said  another. 

"  Stand  back !     Stand  back !  "  cried  others. 

He  found  himself  thrusting  through  an  excited, 
swaying  crowd,  all  staring  at  the  flames,  and  with 
the  red  reflection  in  their  eyes. 

"  Stand  back ! "  said  a  labourer,  clutching  him. 

"What  is  it?"  said  the  Angel.  "What  does 
this  mean?" 

"  There's  a  girl  in  the  house,  and  she  can't  get 
out!"  - 

"  Went  in  after  a  fiddle,"  said  another. 

"  'Tas  hopeless,"  he  heard  someone  else  say. 

"  I  was  standing  near  her.  I  heerd  her.  Says 
she:  'I  can  get  his  fiddle.'  I  heerd  her  —  Just 
like  that!  'I  can  get  his  fiddle.'" 

For  a  moment  the  Angel  stood  staring.  Then 
in  a  flash  he  saw  it  all,  saw  this  grim  little  world 
of  battle  and  cruelty,  transfigured  in  a  splendour 
that  outshone  the  Angelic  Land,  suffused  sud- 
denly and  insupportably  glorious  with  the  won- 
derful light  of  Love  and  Self-Sacrifice.  He  gave 
a  strange  cry,  and  before  anyone  could  stop  him, 


THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

was  running  towards  the  burning  building.    There 
were  cries  of  "  The  Hunchback !     The  Fowener ! " 

The  Vicar,  whose  scalded  hand  was  being  tied 
up,  turned  his  head,  and  he  and  Crump  saw  the 
Angel,  a  black  outline  against  the  intense,  red 
glare  of  the  doorway.  It  was  the  sensation  of 
the  tenth  of  a  second,  yet  both  men  could  not 
have  remembered  that  transitory  attitude  more 
vividly  had  it  been  a  picture  they  had  studied 
for  hours  together.  Then  the  Angel  was  hidden 
by  something  massive  (no  one  knew  what)  that 
fell,  incandescent,  across  the  doorway. 

There  was  a  cry  of  "  Delia  "  and  no  more.  But 
suddenly  the  flames  spurted  out  in  a  blinding 
glare  that  shot  upward  to  an  immense  height* 
a  blinding  brilliance  broken  by  a  thousand  flicker- 
ing gleams  like  the  waving  of  swords.  And  a 
gust  of  sparks,  flashing  in  a  thousand  colours* 
whirled  up  and  vanished.  Just  then,  and  for  a 
moment  by  some  strange  accident,  a  rush  of  music* 
like  the  swell  of  an  organ,  wove  into  the  roaring 
of  the  flames. 

The  whole  village  standing  in  black  knots  heard 
the  sound,  except  Gaffer  Siddons  who  is  deaf  — 
strange  and  beautiful  it  was,  and  then  gone  again. 


240  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

Lumpy  Durgan,  the  idiot  boy  from  Sidderford, 
said  it  began  and  ended  like  the  opening  and 
shutting  of  a  door. 

But  little  Hetty  Penzance  had  a  pretty  fancy 
of  two  figures  with  wings,  that  flashed  up  and 
vanished  among  the  flames. 

(And  after  that  it  was  she  began  to  pine  for 
the  things  she  saw  in  her  dreams,  and  was 
abstracted  arid  strange.  It  grieved  her  mother 
sorely  at  the  time.  She  grew  fragile,  as  though 
she  was  fading  out  of  the  world,  and  her  eyes 
had  a  strange,  far-away  look.  She  talked  of 
Angels  and  rainbow  colours  and  golden  wings, 
and  was  for  ever  singing  an  unmeaning  fragment 
of  an  air  that  nobody  knew.  Until  Crump  took 
her  in  hand  and  cured  her  with  fattening  dietary, 
syrup  of  hypophosphites  and  cod  liver  oil.) 


THE  LAST  DAY  OF  THE  VISIT  —  continued. 
LI. 

IT  was  some  minutes  after  the  footsteps  of  the 
Angel  had  died  away  in  the  distance  that  Gotch 
raised  himself  on  his  hand.  "  By  Jove  ! "  he  said. 
"  Crump's  right. 

"  Cut  at  the  head,  too  !  " 

He  put  his  hand  to  his  face  and  felt  the  two 
weals  running  across  it,  hot  and  fat.  "I'll  think 
twice  before  I  lift  my  hand  against  a  lunatic 
again,"  said  Sir  John  Gotch. 

"  He  may  be  a  person  of  weak  intellect,  but  I'm 
damned  if  he  hasn't  a  pretty  strong  arm.  Phew  ! 
He's  cut  a  bit  clean  off  the  top  of  my  ear  with 
that  infernal  lash. 

"That  infernal  horse  will  go  galloping  to  the 
house  in  the  approved  dramatic  style.  Little 
Madam'll  be  scared  out  of  her  wits.  And  I  ... 
B  241 


242  THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

I  shall  have  to  explain    how  it  all    happened. 
While  she  vivisects  me  with  questions. 

"I'm  a  jolly  good  mind  to  have  spring  guns 
and  man-traps  put  in  this  preserve.  Confound  the 
Law!" 


THE  EPILOGUE. 
LIT. 

AND  there  the  story  of  the  "Wonderful  Visit 
ends.  The  Epilogue  is  in  the  mouth  of  Mrs. 
Mendham.  There  stand  two  little  white  crosses 
in  the  Siddermorton  churchyard,  near  together, 
where  the  brambles  come  clambering  over  the 
stone  wall.  One  is  inscribed  Thomas  Angel  and 
the  other  Delia  Hardy,  and  the  dates  of  the 
deaths  are  the  same.  Really  there  is  nothing 
beneath  them  but  the  ashes  of  the  Vicar's  stuffed 
ostrich.  (You  will  remember  the  Vicar  had  his 
ornithological  side.)  I  noticed  them  when  Mrs. 
Mendham  was  showing  me  the  new  De  la  Beche 
monument.  (Mendham  has  been  Vicar  since 
Hilyer  died.)  "The  granite  came  from  some- 
where in  Scotland,"  said  Mrs.  Mendham,  "and 
cost  ever  so  'much  —  I  forget  how  much  —  but  a 
wonderful  lot !  It's  quite  the  talk  of  the  village." 

243 


244  THE   WONDERFUL  VISIT. 

"  Mother,"  said  Cissie  Mendham,  "  you  are  step- 
ping on  a  grave." 

"  Dear  rne  ! "  said  Mrs.  Mendham.  "  How  heed- 
less of  me!  And  the  cripple's  grave  too.  But 
really  you've  no  idea  how  much  this  monument 
cost  them." 

"These  two  people,  by  the  bye,"  said  Mrs. 
Mendham,  "were  killed  when  the  old  Vicarage 
was  burnt.  It's  rather  a  strange  story.  He  was 
a  curious  person,  a  hunchbacked  fiddler,  who 
came  from  nobody  knows  where,  and  imposed 
upon  the  late  Vicar  to  a  frightful  extent.  He 
played  in  a  pretentious  way  by  ear,  and  we  found 
out  afterwards  that  he  did  not  know  a  note  of 
music  —  not  a  note.  He  was  exposed  before  quite 
a  lot  of  people.  Among  other  things,  he  seems 
to  have  been  'carrying  on,'  as  people  say,  with 
one  of  the  servants,  a  sly  little  drab.  ...  But 
Mendham  had  better  tell  you  all  about  it.  The 
man  was  half-witted  and  curiously  deformed.  It's 
strange  the  fancies  girls  have." 

She  looked  sharply  at  Cissie,  and  Cissie  blushed 
to  the  eyes. 

"  She  was  left  in  the  house  and  he  rushed  into 
the  flames  in  an  attempt  to  save  her.     Quite  ro- 


THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT.  245 

inantic — isn't  it?    He   was   rather   clever  with 
the  fiddle  in  his  uneducated  way. 

"  All  the  poor  Vicar's  stuffed  skins  were  burned 
at  the  same  time.  It  was  almost  all  he  cared  for. 
He  never  really  got  over  the  blow.  He  came  to 
stop  with  us — for  there  wasn't  another  house 
available  in  the  village.  But  he  never  seemed  to 
be  happy.  He  seemed  all  shaken.  I  never  saw 
a  man  so  changed.  I  tried  to  stir  him  up,  but  it 
was  no  good  —  no  good  at  all.  He  had  the  queer- 
est delusions  about  the  Angels  and  that  kind  of 
thing.  It  made  him  odd  company  at  times.  He 
would  say  he  heard  music,  and  stare  quite  stupidly 
at  nothing  for  hours  together.  He  got  quite 
careless  about  his  dress.  ...  He  died  within 
a  twelvemonth  of  the  fire." 


THE  END. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


llFeb'65JT 
REC'D  LD 
FEB1 


REC'D  LD    MAR 


BEC.  CI8.APR  1  j  77 


AUTO.  Qj 
AUG2 


4     .-12  AM 


C.  c 


*  I  ?iVy-. 


ci*.    DEC  3      1979 


LD  21A-60m-4,'64 
(E4555slO)476B 


RECCIRC 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


G£NEML"BBARV-U.C.  BERKELEY 


